Board of Commissioners (boc) - Regular Meeting

Good.

Good evening. I'll call this meeting to order for the Pittsburgh Board of Commissioners on September 14th, 2026. We'll start with a moment of silence. Please join me. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Farrell, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Certainly.

Would everyone rise for the Pledge?

We have the regular agenda and the consent agenda in front of us. Are there any changes or additions to either? Yes. the consent agenda i'd like to pull for discussion on the public works building okay number six number six we'll make it action item number six any other changes or additions yes mr mayor two uh number five

We'll make that number 8, number 9, and number 10.

OK. Number 5, number 8, number 9, and number 10. OK. 6.

I think, what, 9, 10, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10.

OK. Anything else? There's nothing left.

Is it just for consent?

Any changes to consent or regularity?

We've got two then. Let's wait for that item. OK.

I'll take a motion to approve the regular meeting agenda. So moved. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Farrell. Second. Second. Commissioner Hunsiker, all those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. I'll take a motion to approve the revised consent agenda.

So moved.

Thank you.

Second.

Second, Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

and passes thank you um up first we have a presentation on the promise so uh commissioner foley's been in this effort so if you can start with your role and the team you're working with and things like that for the project my role as a project receiver okay such a weird thing to be on this side hi

I have a story to start, a story. When I was on the Chatham County Affordable Advisory Committee, we had this beautiful woman, she's 85 years old, come in and she thought she might be gaining information about what affordable housing is about and how she can get it. And what she got was a group of volunteers dedicated to affordable housing. And I took her under my wing and she just couldn't do. She's 85 years old, she had no family. She was at an apartment complex here in Pittsburgh that was at the time affordable, that was purchased by another vendor and all of a sudden it was unaffordable for her. She was at her wit's end what to do. And that inspired what I'm about to present to you It's called The Promise, and The Promise is an attainable housing concept right in the downtown area of Pittsburgh. Where's my clicker? The red one? There. The Promise is this, that the nonprofit presents this on both of the buildings. that these homes shall remain attainable, that those who live here shall do so with dignity and pride, and that this place shall strengthen our community for generations to come. That's the promise. So what is the promise? The concept is two buildings, Five, and the drawing is a little bit misleading, five residential floors and two commercial floors, a central courtyard. And in the back, you see a parking lot. And the whole idea of the Promise is that we offer townhouses that are quite affordable. We're quite attainable. attainable meaning right now at these present dollars between 170 and 220 000 for studio parking at 170 for a one bedroom 200 and for a two bedroom 220 000 well that's really hard to attain so how do we do it first off we are focused on some land that the chatham county will be vacating in the future. It's not agreed upon about the timing of this, but we would take advantage of 5.1 square acres of property right downtown Pittsburgh. It's right where the service department is right now. And it's centrally located for these units. So we're talking about 420 units, 210 in each building. and then two commercial on the bottom the commercial sites would pay for part of the upkeep of the building same with parking and the whole idea is that if you purchase a townhouse from this non-profit community And you live in that place. The equity that you accrue by the time you have finished and are ready to sell the property, the majority of that goes back into the community for the next individual to come in and purchase the property at an attainable rate. Since these condominiums are deed-restricted, deed restriction means you have to abide by whatever the rules of the restriction is on the deed. In this case, you're only allowed to sell back to the nonprofit. And so it rolls and continues that way. What are the economic advantages of having something like that? Well, first off, I imagine in the commercial side of things, the two stories below, I'd love to see China Marketplace there. China Marketplace, I presented this idea to them. They loved the idea, and they're allowing me to speak on their eagerness to get some of that leased space on the bottom floor. I can also envision a workspace like 79 West or the Perch moving there. I haven't solicited them yet, but that would be a great opportunity for them. Daycare, perhaps. I know there's parking regulation rules we'd have to abide by, but if there's parking there, perhaps we can obtain that as well. So the whole idea is to provide 420 attainable housing units right downtown Pittsburgh, two blocks from the circle, two blocks from the circle. That's 700 people right downtown, 700 people. They're shoppers. They are taxpayers, property taxpayers, because they'd be owning their land. They'd be owning their, excuse me, their property, not the land. what does that mean well force for 700 plus or minus people that live there the purchase the purchasing power comes to about 84 8.4 million dollars per year of purchasing power There's also the tax benefit for the Chatham County and for Pittsboro, $370,000 per year. At today's tax rates for the town of Pittsboro, 500,000 tax rates for the county. I think it's a great idea. I do. I think this will work. I also feel that if we make sure that we have the agreements written correctly, what we can do with accounting, if we come up with an agreement, if the nonprofit that will run the promise falls apart, folds, They still have a $120 million building that the county or the town can use as their win. So for me, it's a win-win. So again, it's a nonprofit. Everybody that buys and sells has to go through the nonprofit. And that's what keeps the prices down. I'd love to have more questions.

so john i i love this i don't really have a question i just have more of a comment um i've heard a lot in the past week about people talking about what we are calling affordable in town and how people who are young people especially would rather own as opposed to rent. And that is not an option. Even at $299,000, $300,000, it's not attainable for so many folks. I've talked to older people who are saying because property taxes have gone up, their mortgage payment has gone up $300. What are they not supposed to be able to, what should they not buy? And this seems to bring old and young an opportunity to own, to live. And from a small business perspective, I have a hard time getting employees where we're at because they cannot afford to live here. This would give downtown and other parts of Pittsburgh, even in surrounding areas, an incredible wealth of talent to pull from who can afford to work here. I love everything about this. I think it's something that we need. And I look forward to seeing if this is something that pencils out and that we can do because we need something that brings, that allows people to stay here, that brings talent that we can draw from. And let's, this new generation not, be kind of subjected to be a generation of only renters where they are one job loss away from homelessness or one, for the seniors, one medical issue away from homelessness. So this seems to really hold and I just think it's a shot of adrenaline that we need for downtown.

Thank you. I like that word, shot of adrenaline, that phrase. So what I envision is what you envision, I think, and that is downsizers, people that really can't afford those downsizing homes that we're seeing elsewhere in the community. And I also see kids on couches that are living with their parents and they can't afford much because they have college tuition to pay for for years and years.

I also see

I see town staff. I know we have town staff that are going to Carver. I'd love to see them here to walk to work. And so that's the promise. That's what we're aiming to do. And this is a project that I can see though from just a little lady that was desperate for something. This is an answer that's not really being done in the nation right now. This is very unique. There's one housing trust fund that does it in Vermont, the Champlain Housing Trust Fund. It's working there. And I think we can form We can form a board consisting of real estate attorneys, land attorneys. We can form a board with, I'd love to see a town commissioner on it. Not me because I'm forming this idea. It wouldn't be me, it'd be somebody else. I would like to see community leaders on the board. I would like to see people that are interested in affordable housing on that board, and I would like to see it replicated in other places. I'd like to see the Promise move to places like Siler City. I know that the town of Sanford has expressed interest in it. Right now, the lot is occupied, so we would have to wait for the county to move out of those lots. So that's one barrier that we have right now. So that's the promise. It's a promise to individuals that want to own land, that want to start a credit rating and move forward in their lives in a strong way economically.

So that's our head. I think this sounds good. Is it specific to that lot?

The only reason I chose that lot is that topographically it's 104 feet below the county courthouse. So a seven story building would not be as imposing. So, and also I chose the lot because that lot tapers down. And so the price for parking underground, if we have underground parking or above ground parking, it'd be less excavation, so it'd be less expensive. Those are the reasons why I'm talking about that specific property. There's another appealing property right next to it. I'd be happy to use it, but I think it might be a little bit more expensive there. And again, the whole idea is to keep the cost down. My vision is for $170,000 studio that has the same rent as a two-bedroom apartment rent, including the HOA fees. So that's the vision. And I think we can do it with the right finance.

Any other questions on Commissioner Foley's project? Thank you. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. All right. Up next, we have Citizens Matters, and we'll start with the managers update. I'm sorry. Up next, we have a few ceremonial items. So earlier, The end of last week was the 25th anniversary of September 11th. We are fortunate to have a really amazing memorial here in our town. And so we have a proclamation for that. A day of remembrance. Whereas on September 11, 2001, four civilian aircraft were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the loss of innocent lives. And whereas we honor the courage and sacrifice of the firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency personnel, military members, and citizens who responded, including those who gave their lives and those who continue to suffer illnesses and injuries resulting from their service. And whereas Americans came together in unity, compassion, patriotism, and service, demonstrating the resilience of our nation in the face of tragedy. And whereas the 25th anniversary of September 11th holds special significance for the town of Pittsboro, a community with deep ties to first responders and a longstanding tradition of service and home to a memorial that includes a piece of the World Trade Center. And whereas, as a new generation grows up with no personal memory of September 11th, we must preserve the history of that day and ensure the lives lost and acts of heroism are never forgotten. And whereas, on this 25th anniversary, the town of Pittsboro joins communities across the nation in solemn remembrance and reaffirms the promise to never forget. now therefore i kyle ship mayor of the town of pittsburgh and on behalf of the pittsburgh board of commissioners do hereby proclaim september 11th to 2026 as a day of remembrance in the town of pittsburgh and encourage all citizens to pause in remembrance of those lost on september 11 2001 honor the bravery and sacrifice of first responders military personnel and all who served and carry forward the spirit of unity and service that emerged from that tragic day. And I proclaim that on September 11. And there's a really beautiful service downtown that we're able to put together, that a lot of people put together. So thank you. Up next, we also have a proclamation of leave the leaves season. Whereas fallen leaves enrich soil, support pollinators and wildlife, conserve moisture, and reduce the need for fertilizer in mulch. And whereas the Town of Pittsboro encourages residents to leave leaves in place where appropriate or to use them as mulch, compost, or natural ground cover. And whereas reducing leaves placed at the curb can limit yard waste collection demands, support sustainable landscaping, and protect local waterways. And whereas the town will launch a Leave the Leaves webpage, share information through press and social media channels, and distribute educational materials at town hall, parks, the library, and other community locations. And whereas, residents may take the Leave the Leaves pledge through the online public works service request form and pick up a yard sign from Town Hall. And whereas, leaf collection season begins October 12, 2026, making early promotion important for resident awareness and participation. And now, therefore, I, Kyle Schiff, Mayor of the Town of Pittsboro, and on behalf of the Pittsboro Board of Commissioners, do hereby proclaim the fall of 26 as Leave the Leaves season in the Town of Pittsboro and encourage residents to take the pledge, use leaves as a natural resource where appropriate, and help promote a healthier, more sustainable community. Thank you.

all right now we're at citizens matters and we'll start with the manager's update thank you mayor uh didn't have a whole lot of time today to put together that update um but i will let you know that we did meet last week a couple of times on lewis freeman park with the working group that we've established to come up with the educational information. And I'm already seeing a flurry of emails from them, so that means they're getting to work real quick. And we're hoping to actually get the actual physical work started back at that park for the next week or two. But I'll provide you all an update later on this month. Thank you.

All right. Next is my update to ribbon cuttings. On September 9th, we had a ribbon cutting at Griffin Farms Townhomes down at 8715501 in Sanford Road. The project's been a long time coming. It's good to have those units available. On August 17th, I had a lunch with Senator Foushee and her staff and just updated them. They were all here from DC and North Carolina and touring the area and was able to update them on the needs of Pittsboro and just what's happening in the area. So that was a great opportunity. On August 25th, Mayor Pro Tem and I met with the county chair and co-chair in our normal quarterly meeting in coordination with them. August 28 there was a connected communities briefing that gave the results of a really regional effort of computer and technology training. That was done, so that was a really great program and September 3 we had the Chatham data briefing here with the Chamber of Commerce and lots of lots of good information was put out there. So we had a Central Pines RPO, the transportation meeting on August 13th, reviewed the money that DOT has and doesn't have for projects around town. And we will meet again on October 8th. Up next, Commissioner Hunziker.

Okay, let's see. So the past month, I did go to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board meeting where they discussed a variety of different programs, one of which will be tonight. I did attend the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, but I know Commissioner Foley will speak more on that. Held two commissioner coffee chats with some good attendance and some really good feedback from residents. I attended the September 11 Memorial Service and I met with the town on some environmental and sustainability initiatives, one of which was Leave the Leaves. And I just really want to thank the town staff for embracing and moving with the Leave the Leaves program i'm excited to see it take shape and i'm glad that we're going to emphasize how to do it responsibly it doesn't have to be all or nothing even leaving a portion of your leaves can really support pollinators insects soil health in our local ecosystem ecosystem and i can't wait to take my pledge and plant my sign so and um i guess that's it for me thank you commissioner bonds

Or yes, thank you. So first thing is the Central Pines Regional Council board meeting happened on August 26th, which was during my annual Sustainable Fleet Technologies Conference in Durham. So I was not able to attend. But in reviewing the minutes from that I think the most noteworthy thing from this board meeting was the sharing of resources on policies for local government policies for data centers. So i'm eager to share that with anybody who's curious. and The Climate Action Advisory Committee, Chatham County Climate Action Advisory Committee, has been, well, first they were preparing comments for Chatham County's planning staff's deliberation of policy proposals for the Board of Commissioners on data centers. And now they are reviewing those draft ordinance amendments for data centers intending to give input to the county planning board. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Commissioner Ferrer?

Well, other than the, uh, that I attended with the mayor of the Chatham County and Pittsburgh meeting, I also attended the 9 11 Memorial and the board. We have our yearly audit that will be, uh, we'll have information Wednesday. So more to come from that.

Uh, busy, busy this last month. Um, first of all, I want to shout out to the town in, in my community. We are repairing curbs. And I think that's thumbs up. And I know the same was happening last weekend. I appreciate that effort. Talked to some of the staff, they were some of our contractors, of course, but very kind, very courteous. So that's the feedback is like, okay, thank you for that. I met with Economic Development Corporation Michael Smith and invited him to make a presentation to the board last month. And so he's here this month to honor that invitation. I met with the Tiger Rescue, the Carolina Tiger Rescue Group, and they want to give a shout out to the to the board during a public meeting, public opportunity. So they'll be talking. I had a Affordable Housing Advisory Committee meeting and Commissioner Hunsaker was there as well. And we talked about, we talked about Farrington Preserve, which is a community just north of Pittsburgh on the west side of 15501. And I promised that community that I would speak that potential community that I was speaking on behalf of the affordable housing that they are planning to offer that that development. I toured South Creek, the building that is on the east side of 15501, really close to, right over the Chatham County border. South Creek is a community that has 80 acres donated to a community trust fund, not a trust fund, but a community land conservancy. And in the front near the buildings itself, I think that, by the way, I think that's a very generous 80 acres. It's just woods, it's beautiful forest. And then the community itself, there are two buildings right on the road that I would love to see mimicked with the Promise. It's five stories and two commercial underneath. So I got to tour with a builder and he's quite interested in the Promise himself. So we might have a builder for that. I talked to Chris O'Brien from, is it WPVO? It's regular PVO. Regular PVO. So it's not caffeinated, it's, okay. And I learned all about this wonderful man and his passion for radio. And all of a sudden I've learned that he has a passion for Pittsburgh too. And a true journalist. So I welcome everybody to introducing to Chris. I spoke with Fire Chief Darrell Griffin. I spent a half a day touring the fire stations in our district. Felt his concerns, and we are still advocating for a north station sooner than later. We're looking for two and a half to five acres just north of Mosaic. So the search continues for that. The mayor and I were at the Harris Nuclear Power Plant. I think that was last month, right? Very interesting, cool place. um we we visited the mock-up but the mock-up isn't the real thing but it's just like it and so we got to actually the mayor got to trip a switch to make alarms go up which was terrifying and fun at the same time emergency yes the training emergency and then uh two other things i did uh just for the community i uh did an alzheimer's testimonial my My dad passed away 10 years ago. And so I did a testimonial for a group that's recording caregivers advice to those who have people in their lives that do have Alzheimer's. So that was quite wonderful. And the last thing I did, I'm a kidney donor. living kidney donor and um so i went to duke university and national kidney foundation uh asked me to speak to potential donors living obviously living donors and uh what it takes to be one what's the process how how long did it take to recover and what your life is afterwards and uh so That was a profound weekend, too, this Saturday. So I think that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christopher.

yes i attended the state of chatham event by chatham chamber of commerce which was i believe commissioner bonnets was there and foley and there was lots of great information our county is obviously growing and i'm proud to be here because there's just lots of great things happening and rebecca and her team really made sure to prove that during the presentation. So kudos to you. That was a great event. And I attended the PDAB, Pittsburgh Downtown Advisory Board, board meeting. And they have lots of great things going on there too. There's such a talented board and I'm excited to see what comes next.

Thank you. Up next, we have public comment. So when you come up, please state your name and address at the start of your comments. There's a time limit of three minutes, which will be displayed on the screen. In the interest of time and fairness, it's the board's policy not to respond directly to comments during this period. Staff will follow up as appropriate. Any speakers with handouts will give them to the town clerk, and they will be distributed to the board at the conclusion of this meeting. We have three people signed up this evening. This is Kathy Russell, followed by Susan King Cote. Up next is Susan King Cote, followed by Zach Smith.

Hi, I'm Susan Cain Pope, and my address is 1940 Hanks Chapel Road in Pittsburgh. That's actually Carolina Tiger Rescue's address, because I live in Mayfax. I'm one of the people that drive in every day to support the community. But I'm really excited to be here. For those of you who may not know, Carolina Tiger Rescue has been around for about 50 years. We are a wildcat sanctuary. We also have other animals besides wildcats. And really what our main goal is is to provide a forever home to animals that have been neglected, who are part of the entertainment industry, who are part of the breeding program, and who have been exploited for profit. We give them a forever home. And then we also educate people so that people no longer make these same mistakes. If you haven't been out to the sanctuary, I offer you a personal invitation. I'm happy to take you around and introduce you to some of our residents. But our role in community doesn't just stop right at the sanctuary gates. It's also a place where people come for education. Over 20,000 people come into our sanctuary every year. People from across North Carolina, across Chatham County, across the United States, and even about 50 people from around the world. So we really have a very broad reach. And all of those people, after they leave, we know that they come into Pittsburgh, that they frequent the businesses, that they stay at the hotels, that they go to the restaurants. They visit downtown Chatham and Pittsboro as well as go to the plant and all the local things because it really is a great small town. And we believe that there is a lot of opportunity for growth. Pittsboro has become even more attractive to families that are moving into the area. The economic development aspect of things is growing. And we think that Carolina Tiger Rescue has a lot to add to that. We're right in the middle of our Protect Magnificent program, where we are building a new education and visitor center. And part of that process will also be including a lot of additional accessibility for all people to come over and visit, as well as to upgrade the infrastructure and to enhance our educational programming. Right now we have about 50 schools who come out and get educational field trips every year, and we'd like for that to be much greater. We also see an opportunity to really work with the county more closely and with other organizations. We have a vast knowledge on tourism and hospitality, on education and economic development. We really do want to be good neighbors and good community partners. And perhaps most importantly, our mission truly aligns with Chatham County and with Pittsboro. And that is because the people who work at Carolina Tiger Rescue, the people who come and visit carolina tiger rescue they care about the community they care about his future about his the environment about the quality of life of the people who live and work here and the experiences that we can create everlasting stories so that people's mindsets are changed as well was that my timer yes thank you so much thank you thank you very good up next is zach smith

Hello everyone, my name is Zach Smith and I live at 190 Tiny Loop in Briar Chapel. I'd like the Town of Pittsboro to work with Chatham County to figure out how to build an indoor recreational facility so we can have sports like basketball, pickleball, and volleyball in Pittsboro. Ideally, this facility would include a configurable gym space with six to 12 courts, high ceilings, collapsible bleachers, an indoor walking trail, a climbing wall, a weight and exercise room, flex space for classes, events, community meetings, and elections. Here are three reasons why this is a good idea. One, the county is growing and our indoor recreational facilities are already over capacity. There's more demand for rec leagues and open gyms than the county can offer. A large recreational facility will provide more access to sports and create a healthier county. Two, if you're a parent of one of the hundreds of kids in the county that play club volleyball, which is what I'm most familiar with because that's what my daughter plays, You're most likely driving 30 to 50 minutes each way two to four times a week to bring your kid to practice. And that's just one sport. Having a facility in Pittsburgh where vetted nonprofit sports clubs can have their home will reduce the burden on families and make indoor sports more affordable to our children. Three, a facility like this would allow us to host tournaments on weekends and have a significant economic impact. This, A, reduces the travel burden for local families because they can play here, and B, brings more tourism dollars to our county. We can make this happen by following the playbook of Sanford, which opened the Lee County Athletic Park last year. Here's what they did. Step one, get community buy-in. That's what we're doing right here for this facility. Step two, commission a feasibility study so we know what size the facility should be and how much it will cost. Step three, hold a bond referendum where Chatham County residents can vote to approve this project. Step four, hopefully build the facility. My request to the board is to get your feedback and your connections to make this feasibility study happen. We need the right people behind this project so we can make Pittsburgh and Chatham County a better place for families. Thank you.

Up next, we have a few presentations. The first is the new town hall project update.

Board.

hello with me my name is benjamin i'm project engineer tonight we have a update on the new town hall project hh architecture is here as well and we'll be presenting on the site and building design so this image is uh the 1938 ariel with the star the new town hall location at the corner of thompson j farrell yep So we're currently in design development with HH Architecture and their design team. And we have edifice construction advising on constructability, providing detailed cost estimates as the design progresses. The design and project team have developed a building program which has been trimmed and made more efficient after a preliminary cost estimate by Edifice. And in June, we had a community engagement meeting with town staff and HH architecture, where we saw feedback from the community on design aesthetics and priorities. HH will have a slide on this later. And then we've finished this schematic design with HH and received a detailed cost estimate from Edifice, which I'll be showing in a later slide. So just want to highlight some key features HH will be presenting on the design. But I just wanted to point out the project right now meets current staffing needs. It also allows for growth. And so that means 15 or 16 empty offices on day one, maybe less than that on day one. And then a designated area for future building and parking. A boardroom with 100 person seating capacity and overflow accommodations. A boardroom integrated AV system designed by a AV consultant. The building will have automation features for lighting and HVAC. And also we're trying to showcase some low impact stormwater features on the site to reduce concentrated stormwater flow, minimize piping and curb and gutter. So this is our current estimate of construction costs. That first number is the detailed cost estimate by Edifice. And so they quantified over 300 construction line items to develop that price. They used subcontractor input. And so that's the cost if we were to build it today. We also evaluated over 30 value engineering options to kind of further reduce the cost. And then the other items are just other items that are needed basically to open up the building. So furniture, AV, IT, utility and permitting fees, et cetera. So this is the same schedule I presented in March and we're on track. So I didn't make any changes, but right now you can see what it takes to get to bid the project. And ultimately our goal is to complete construction by the end of 2028. And right now, as you all are aware, the current town hall lease ends at that time. And so that's really driving this schedule. And not a whole lot of room in order to meet that goal to slip. So again, we have HH architecture here. I'll introduce Daniel Jenks.

Thank you, Ben.

As Ben introduced, my name is Daniel Jenks. I'm an architect at HH Architecture. Joining me tonight is Sila Ransmeier, who's a partner at HH Architecture. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share a little bit about the design process so far and also open it up to some feedback. To give a quick recap of everything we've done to date, we conducted that community engagement event, we've built out the site plan, settled on a floor plan, kept sustainability in mind, and I can highlight a few of those aspects tonight, and then also began the exterior design. We've actually got some renderings to share for you this evening. So to recap the community engagement event, we were able to host kind of an open forum on June 4th. And what HH did to support that event was bring these boards, as you can see here. Each with different options for different areas of the design, focusing on community values, interior palette, and exterior palette. And then members of the public were invited to show their support with a sticker. So you can see, or maybe you can't see, community values. You've got a lot of support for sustainable, a lot of support for community focused, and a lot of support for warm and inviting. And this is what we invited folks to think about. What does this building want to feel like when you walk into it? On the interior side of things, most of the support was on the contemporary collaborative scheme, which is a little more modern looking interior design, but also got a lot of support for the wood touches in both regional heritage and natural framework. On the exterior, lots of support for wood elements, lots of support for a metal roof, lots of support for natural light and a front porch, all of which you'll see represented in our final renderings. And then on the exterior, big support for the more sustainable features of the site, native planting and more natural stormwater approach. If you're maybe lagging a little bit here. And looking at the site plan, we did settle on kind of a similar shape to the plan you may remember from the feasibility study a year ago, but did trim it up quite a bit, which we can talk about in the floor plan section. The building's still sited in sort of the northeast portion of the site. We're imagining a bit of a courtyard space wrapping around the south side of the building, parking towards the south as well, and have also allowed for some future parking at some point in the future. We've reserved some space for a future addition. While we have reserved future office space already within this program, We're leaving space open for a future addition if at some point in the future the town needs that. We're also thinking about sustainability and kind of future proofing the site by providing the infrastructure for EV charging. Right now we're planning on the infrastructure for future installation of EV chargers. That would be six chargers, dual headed chargers, so 12 spots in total. Also thinking about the stormwater, we opted for a wetland style stormwater control measure, which is a more natural stormwater control measure, less reliant on underground concrete or plastic tanks. Zooming in a bit, you can get a sense of where the building entry is at that yellow arrow. We're also including a vehicle drop off lane for flag poles, which will also house a pollinator garden and then outdoor seating at the plan south there, as well as bike racks. One thing you'll notice is two mechanical yards on either end of the building. The larger one serves the two story portion, which is the right most volume of what you're looking at. And then a smaller one serving the boardroom wing, which is the leftmost volume you're looking at. We opted for exterior units here to try to save some cost. Typically, those have to find space inside the interior conditioned envelope of the building. And by leaving those outside, we were able to save that cost. So in looking at the floor plan we're really pleased with working with the town to find the efficiencies, we did in this plan. From the feasibility study plan we were able to remove close to 6000 square feet, which at the cost per square foot we're expecting for this building. That equates to over $3 million of savings. A way to think about this plan is that left volume kind of being the legislative wing and the right volume being the administrative wing, and the left wing housing the boardroom, the commissioner's conference room, the mayor's office, and other legislative functions, and then the admin wing housing most of the county, sorry, town offices for the building. Linking the two volumes is a lobby space, which is fairly generous. We also imagine this to be highly glazed to let in a lot of natural light. This space could also serve as spill out of a boardroom meeting. So if a commissioner meeting runs out of seats for a well-attended meeting, you'd be able to spill out into this lobby, set up chairs, and have TVs at either side of those boardroom doors projecting the meeting from inside. You can see the reception desk there, and then an open stair just beyond that. So that stair is not behind closed walls or behind the door, it'll be open, really highlighting that warm and inviting feeling as you enter the building. We have public restrooms around the corner there, and back to back with that would be the private restrooms for the folks who work inside the building. And we made efforts to make those restrooms stack for efficiency. At the interior core of the two-story wing, you can see some of the common spaces like conference rooms, coffee rooms, storage rooms, and the break room. And then as we move upstairs, much more office spaces, more common spaces towards the center with the restrooms and open conference spaces, and then another medium conference room on the plan south, the two-story wing. So we heard tremendous support for sustainability at the community engagement event. So we wanted to take a second to highlight the sustainable features of this design. We have sort of shot for LEED-like design standards. And if you're familiar with LEED, it's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which is a regulating body who can grant certifications for buildings for a price. So we are trying to approach those LEED-like design standards without extending the expense of actually getting certified. So thinking about energy and resource consciousness, we're using all LED lighting and smart lighting controls, low flow or automatic plumbing fixtures. We're going to be solar ready. And by that, I mean we have all the infrastructure for solar panels to be installed at a later date, including the inverter, the panel, the right electrical panels and a conduit to the roof. The HVAC systems will be commissioned, which means that a third party will come in and do professional testing and balancing to make sure the system is running at its peak. Also including smart HVAC controls that are integrated with occupancy sensors, lighting controls, things like that, to make sure it's not running any more than it needs to. From the site perspective, we're expecting all native plantings that wetland for stormwater control. One thing that often gets overlooked is the benefits of using a previously developed site. We're not tearing up a greenfield to place this building. It's a building that's already been developed and we're actually adding less than an acre of impervious area to the site. We're also considering pervious paving, and that may end up being a bid alternate, which means that it would be priced separately at bid day, and you can choose whether or not you want to include that in the final product. From finishes, we're going to focus on local sourcing and local labor, low VOC content, and high recyclable content. With that, we can move to the outside of the building. We actually have two options for you all to consider this evening, and maybe even a third if we see fit to take a look at a third option. We're imagining a relatively simple form in which the boardroom volume, the legislative volume, has a single slope roof moving towards what I would consider the front of the building, where the front entrance is, which is opposite this elevation. allowing us to get really high ceilings in the chamber space, which is where you're seeing those high windows along this side of the facade. You can just see the sort of glassy lobby volume in between the two larger volumes, and then the two-story admin room beyond that. So this scheme focuses on kind of a darker sort of charcoal-like fiber cement volume at the two-story portion, and then a nice vertical wood look siding at the boardroom volume. CoB, Gerrit Slattery, Here you can also see that single slope roof towards the front, but you may not be able to tell us that that roof extending more than 10 feet out from the face of the building kind of creating that front porch feel in front of the order and volume.

CoB, Gerrit Slattery, What is the circle from the. West end of that overhang.

So we've been calling it Oculus, which would just be a void within that overhang roof. We think there's an opportunity to do something really interesting there, whether it be something inlaid into the sidewalk or some public art that is kind of naturally highlighted by that opening. We're leaving that open at the moment, but thought it really added something to this elevation. Thank you. So as a second option, we kind of flipped the approach of the last one and went lighter on the two-story volume and darker on the wood look.

That's what that would look like from the front.

The colors may be a little tricky on the projector here, but happy to share printed copies too. And beyond the two options we prepared for this slide deck, we also heard that there might be some concern about the lack of this facade. So we spent the day putting together a third option for folks to consider. And I've got that printed here. I'd be happy to hand it out. Thank you.

Is that the same thing?

Daniel, is that the same image? Is it this? Yes, that's right. Does it have an Oculus also?

It does. It does. OK. So this scheme, the boardroom side is the same as the lighter wood scheme we showed in the body of the presentation, but that two-story volume would become brick. I do want to give a small caveat that we spent one day on this. So there is some further exploration we would need to do to further detail the brickwork. But we gave some indication of some of the detailing we would expect with the brick facade, using opportunities to change the running bond from the first floor to the second floor to add some variety. um some offsets and sweeps within the brick to add some detailing and there are plenty of examples in pittsburgh that we could start to pick up details on and carry forward into this building is there expected cost difference between what was shown before in this I expect the cost to be fairly comparable. It's possible brick is slightly more expensive. I'm not sure it's going to be something you'll really feel in the final estimate between the two options.

It's a facade anyway, right?

Yeah.

Any questions or comments?

I have a couple. Can you tell me how many people came to the June 4th community engagement and weighed in on design?

It was a smaller group. I don't remember the exact number.

There were eight dots on the sustainable. I think you said that was the turnout that was enormous.

Each person got multiple stickers, too. We asked people to spread them around, not put double on one item, but.

Just like the pollinator gardens, I love that we're going to use native plants. I would just like to say that along Thompson Street, it would be nice to have trees because we are positioning Pittsburgh to be walkable and all the time, and it is hot. So having shade trees along, I think it would also enhance. For bike racks, I just had a meeting, and a lot of people were talking about a lot of feedback that bike racks should have chargers. People are using e-bikes. And then on the interior, we did, I know, request an extra. Can you go back to the interior? We had requested an extra exit. at the um behind the podium or at that entrance and i that wasn't some previous renderings and it seems to have been lost yeah i can um speak to that i can exit to the north

Yeah, that's a good idea.

And I don't know how that would work looking at the facade because we've got, but it was something that was, I believe, important to all of us at one point to have that exit.

Maybe a fire escape also to the west right next to that HVAC pad. If we just some ideas, but you know,

i don't want to no no i just wanted to to just point that out i don't remember what i think it was basically right behind the podium yeah so at a certain point in the design we flipped the layout of the boardroom which would have put that exit at the sort of northwest corner of this rendering here which means we would have to extend new sidewalk out to meet it and add that site cost What we did as a compromise is that door just right of mechanical electrical was provided both as a secondary exit for folks, citizens in the boardroom, but also for folks behind the desk.

I got a couple of pages of feedback from citizens and residents and business owners. And I'd very much like to take that up in a more intensive, focused workshop setting. So that's my preference.

This borough is our home. We have a historic courthouse right downtown, and it was built by Chatham County in 1787. It's been here a long time. And its weight, and I mean historic weight, its substance, its power is substantial. And when I look at the drawings here, the images of that, I don't see the same power and establishment that we can portray as a town. And I know we're so far along in this. Is that something we can talk about in a session, an open hearing session? That are my concerns. I do know there might be answers to that. We can all bang on it. I can't thank you enough for your efforts, Daniel, and your group, H&H. We as a board get to decide something that's going to be historic and substantial. And I know my town manager is looking at me right now and saying, where are we going to pay for it? But I want to bang it out before we just give a thumbs up here.

and uh hopefully that's that's something the board can also agree with yes yes yes yes yes perhaps i'll just mention also um the floor plan is fine no problem looks like all the space is utilized very well i just have a little issue with that exterior to me old school it looks like two separate buildings I don't know if we need to move brick to the government side. I would like to see a little overhang on the Thompson Street side of the town hall administrative. Just from my past work at UNC Hospital, a flat front like that is a monster for water leaks around windows and stuff like that. So maybe some type of roof overhang over that for that Thompson Street. if we do imagine that um metal portion that's turning down to be proud of the windows and proud of the fiber cement below i just the poor plan is great i believe we are good with that if we could just maybe have a few more different exterior models to look at keeping in the same budget you know what i mean i don't want just to keep putting this off if we need to i know we're on time a work session we need to do it rapidly and give his word back to our architects and town managers

Well, let's defer to the staff. What if we have a like a meeting two weeks from now? Would that be an appropriate time? And where would we meet?

That's a great question. I think we could easily set up a workshop in a couple of weeks. Carrie and I would need to figure out location. Sorry, Carrie. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Is that is the request for that to be in the evening or during the day survey in the week evening.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, target.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, Well, what I mean I want to keep it tight, but if we said, like two weeks from now on the 28th sounds good. TAB, Mark McIntyre, six o'clock.

You have to find availability first for everything.

How much space do you need? That depends on how many people from the public show up.

I think we say we can target that pending availability.

OK. And we'll get cracking on that, and we'll get at you if the day needs to change or the time. But we'll aim for 6 PM somewhere. we don't want to pick a spot that doesn't have enough for public participation and then we have to move the meeting or delay it how does this affect our schedule we need to move pretty quickly so there's a little bit of buffer built in but we lost some of that in the beginning um so we're i don't want to say exactly but we i think we have a little bit of room is that on the lease side or is that on the construction side it's on both Our lease is up, I think one is up in December of 28, and the other one is up in January of 29. And that seems like a long time. No, no, no. Because we'll run into issues.

Are you downstairs and upstairs leases? Is that what you mean? Okay. Downstairs is mainly meeting space, right? And you also have some grounds, facilities downstairs, offices.

Those are separate leases. So the downstairs, the old YMCA, is a sublet. We are a sublet of the YMCA. I believe that one ends January of 2019, or maybe that's the first one.

No, I think that's the first one.

That's the earlier one, yep. So losing that space won't really impact us too much. Any other feedback? Is as much feedback as we can get from now allowed to be the plan for it?

I can critically look at how we have turnout for public feedback. I'd love to have a staff member or somebody qualified to welcome an individual that's coming in. when they're handing them the dots, say, how did you hear about it? So we get a constructive idea of what's working and what's not working when it comes to public outreach. We have to figure out ways that I'd love to have seen 38 dots instead of eight dots. And that would facilitate us making our decisions. We wouldn't be tripping over time as as uh as we find ourselves right now doing so that's that's some feedback to the town not to the designer the architect thank you commissioner foley i completely missed it i wasn't aware that it was happening and so um you know perhaps i i missed it uh in writing but um

often seeing those things on social media helps remind me. And I don't know how I missed it there. So yeah, but I think that socializing this current plan and getting feedback, I think would have put us in a better position with regard to public perception of it. Yeah.

And I have to put it on the board, nobody else. We should have been more aggressive and proactive. So it's on our shoulders, the five of us.

Is there any other sort of exterior design feedback? So if we're looking for the architect to update renderings in two weeks and hopefully have cost information as well, we should provide any feedback we have at this point on what's been provided so we can have the most helpful work session, I guess.

Yeah, I do have something, Mr. Mayor. This is not my idea. The person whose idea it is can claim it. But I love the idea of us moving back into the county courthouse. Actually, we haven't been there ever. But I love to have the Our Town meetings at the Circle. It's a beautiful spot. And then we have extra room to grow into or provide lease opportunities We build a building that's larger than we need right now. We can lease it out and provide income for the town that way. So that's a thought that I know some commissioners would agree with. So that's another option so that as we grow, we can then pick somewhere else to have a substantially larger town hall. But for right now, as a Like as a leap forward, it might be to our advantage to build as quickly as possible, lease out some of the space and have, instead of one of these, have two of these larger buildings next to each other. So we're not incurring any more design costs. You can lease out one building for revenue and the other one's for administration. And then we can grow. In the meantime, we are in the town hall that we identify ourselves with.

So it's an option.

You mean, thank you, Commissioner, you mean in the county town circle? Yeah.

County courthouse. Thank you, Commissioner. It's never been a town building.

No, it's not a town building. It's identified as Pittsburgh. Yeah, it certainly is. I'm sure the county disagrees.

But, Commissioner Farrell, I think I have, not in my tenure have we met there, but I believe that in your tenure,

Were you there?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

The board did meet there.

The one with Chatham Park.

And Chatham Park was approved, and I think the meeting was held there. That's right. Yeah. That's an option. And I think maybe pounding it out in a work session might be something that the board can look at. Yeah.

Thank you. I do think it's a great idea. And I have suggested it to a few people. And thank you for bringing it up. I think it's a grand space, obviously. It's historic. There's a, what's the word, solemnity to that space. Um, that's not even the right word, but, uh, it's certainly a very respectful space. And, uh, for larger meetings, I think it would make a lot of sense. Uh, I know that there's been challenges in thinking through the IT. We now have a full-time IT person. Um, and we didn't before when we were turned down. Um, but I, I think, um, it'd be really great if we could get back to meeting there. and it could be a regular space whereas in this building we're shuttling from room to room based on whatever other programming is happening in the agricultural conference center

nothing negative about that the generosity of the county that's true that's true appreciate it it's a fine meeting space it just doesn't have the same uh feeling yeah yeah well i think i mean we pay for this uh so it's that's right generous i guess but we also pay for it um we got and i appreciate the staff that that runs this for us for sure um i think that the This seems like a different discussion than the construction of a town hall, for one thing, if we're talking about a standard space to meet in and things like that. But I think there's a lot of issues with access and parking and things like that in that space. But I think that a new town hall will give us a lot of opportunities to have our meeting space for all of our needs.

Well, the reason it came to my mind is if we're trying to value engineer, government in Pittsburgh owns a very large meeting space. It happens to be the county government. It happens to be the county courthouse, but we could delete the meeting chambers on this design. And so these are the kinds of complex topics that I really don't want us to rush through right now. I'd really like us to have the time to reflect when we're not feeling pressed with a very long agenda. so that's why i think we really ought to have a workshop so um sounds like do we need a motion for the workshop um or the mayor can just call the meeting once we get the dates up

But to your, I would like to address the idea that was thrown out. So then you can think about staff's response to that. It isn't just having an IT director. We'd have to bring our own IT equipment to every meeting. So I'd be lugging that back and forth. You also have a planning board to think about, PDAB to think about, PARAB to think about, other boards in the future. This meeting, or this is the meeting room that they've designed would service of the town needs and then we're not having to constantly get the county to book space for us also it's my understanding that when the county builds their new facility out on renaissance drive they're going to be building their own boardroom out there and we'll only be using the courthouse for more ceremonial options so then we will be just basically a burden on the county to continue to use that building multiple times a month so i would say having our own burden for me what does it burden me

And we're constantly calling them needing access to their space.

We'd also have to hire a sheriff's deputy to be at the meetings.

Well, this would still be built. So the administrative offices would still be built.

Yeah, I'm talking about the council chambers.

Council chambers at the courthouse you're talking about? Right here. Oh, right here.

Anything that you don't build today is going to cost you double to build it when you get around to it later on. And we've already compressed this.

We are compressed. As much as we can. We are strapped with time. And I'm not comfortable with that. I am not comfortable with it. And so being strapped with time means that we might be making decisions that we don't necessarily need to make. This is one option. And I think we can discuss it. Appreciate your feedback. But we can discuss it in an open session. Thanks.

i make a comment on design of the exterior um i've listened to feedback from the community and that's one of the reasons i asked how many people attended and i did go on june 4th and i attended that um there weren't a lot of people so i didn't know what it was and i think this kind of we've gotten more feedback on the design than i think we had participants in the community event and that's why i just do think it's very important for people to come to these events if we have to find a hold multiple ones or find another way to hold them because we are getting comments back and some of those comments are that the building itself is more modern than the rest of the architecture And that it doesn't really fit on Thompson Street so that people are wanting something a little bit more in line with our historic look. And I would think drive downtown, we have that. And I don't know if that is cost constraints or just trying to go a little more modern. But that is one of the things that I heard. I heard colors were a little dark and I understand that some of the reasons for the darker colors were just upkeep. But people did some like the wood and the multiple elements. So I think bringing in the brick will satisfy some of that. But I did get barn dominium was a was a comment and i think i don't really know what that is but that kind of does sum it up more that fits historic downtown and the rest of uh thompson street so that those are feedbacks that i've gotten from community that but again it would have been nice to have had that community feedback before we started so we've got to figure out how to do better at getting that feedback

in the beginning of anything that we do thank you yeah thank you and i'd say you know i think we have a variety of building styles in town i sort of appreciated the two different styles that represent different areas connected by the glass. I think it's kind of interesting. I think some brick is good. But yeah, I think it's a critical facility for us. And then I guess, too, maybe staff at this workshop can provide a summary of the process so far. So I mean, it has been an extensive process that we've been working through. for comments about the time. First time with renderings, of course, as the process will go. But I want to make sure that we keep, you know, I agree with not making a rush decision to make a rush decision, but also keeping the process moving so that we can complete the project and get on to, you know, and learn some lessons as we build this project for the fire, you know, fire station, police station, other fire stations, all the other facilities that we'll be building in the near future.

Good point. yeah i will just mention one thing that i i go along with the manager regarding our uh town hall with our meeting rooms and all it's just like we're having to look for a building or having a place to to have our parks and rec or having a special meeting when we have our own uh meeting space and all we won't have these problems i'm definitely want us to stay with this same floor plan and whatever minimal exteriors go from there let's move forward i disagree with you commissioner uh we have meeting space a rapid building is we just purchased the rapid building and i know there's meeting space there so

i i don't want to put a burden on anybody however uh i also want our decision as commissioners to be substantial and to look look to the future and uh that's all i gotta say all right any last comments all right we will look at availability yours as well in the timeline and we will call a workshop thank you

Up next, we have four presentations. So we have the Chatham County Economic Development Corporation and Michael Smith presenting.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the board. Thank you for giving me a few minutes to talk to you tonight about economic development here in Pittsburgh and Chatham County. Certainly our organization, we've actually been around as of next year, it'll be 30 years. So it's been an exciting couple of decades to bring us this interesting point that we find ourselves. Certainly our particular office continues to lead the effort to increase the tax base and bring new full-time jobs here to Pittsburgh and Chatham County. We also certainly support existing industries. We actually just recently hired a new person to handle that full time. So that was another positive move for us. We're also do everything we can to provide accurate and updated information on economic development issues across our community. The need for economic development is especially interesting here right now in terms of the people that live here that keep having to go somewhere else to work. And certainly for quality of life reasons, for ecological reasons, it'd be much better to have much more full-time jobs right here in Chatham County rather than having folks to leave. You can see almost 30,000 people every day leave to go to work somewhere other than right here in Pittsburgh. It's over 2000 people that leave every day to work somewhere else. And so the more we can do to bring these jobs here, I think that that helps all of us in a number of different ways. Tax base is something that's especially important as it relates to economic development and why what we're trying to do helps everybody in this room. As you can see with this pie chart, almost 90% of our tax base is residential. The Goldilocks number is more of 60-40. Basically, we're at 90-10. And so one of the most important things our office can do is, again, to try and help change this by bringing in additional new companies to areas that are already slated for industrial growth. This image shows a little bit about what our neighbors are doing. And again, you can see in the far left image, we're 90% much more than our neighbors in Orange, Lee and Moore. Certainly we're above the state average as well. So again, this is something we're trying to work on very, very closely. This is one of the reasons is for every dollar of public services by land use type, commercial and industrial is only 29 cents. Traditional residential is over a dollar. Certainly, it's different here with what we have at Chatham Park. That's very different than your traditional residential use. But in general, that's the difference. And that's one of the many reasons why economic development is very important. It pays for itself. um this is a one-page flyer um that we want to distribute to as many people as possible um that kind of again talks about you know what we have right now uh one of the things in particular we have over 700 square miles uh in chatham county and our population growth continues to almost double what the state average is over the next 10 years again trying to bring jobs here so people aren't just coming to live here we don't want to be just a bedroom community we also want to have industry here as well again we talk about the cost of the community services the other thing that i think that we've talked about a lot recently is this well actually We'll get to the maps here in a minute. In terms of site selection and how companies make their decisions to come to a place like Chatham County and to Pittsburgh, labor is very important. Again, for us, that's positive since we've got all these people leaving. Companies see there are actually people here that would rather be working here. Infrastructure, power, certainly the water and sewer, some things that you all have done a very good job on here in the last couple of years. And having sites that are ready for that type of development. This is something that I thought you all would be interested in taking a look at in terms of the industry sectors that in particularly look in North Carolina, in particular energy, automotive, and biotech are those top three that are definitely looking right here in Chatham County. And when you see those numbers in terms of the median investments, energy and biotech are both over 100 million. Automotive is a little over 30 million. And then the median wages again are much higher than what our typical average wage is here. Incentives, it's something that's kind of a part of, it's cost of doing business. And one of the things on this image you see, 94% of counties in North Carolina have incentive programs. 91% of municipalities have incentive programs. And the two most important phrases to keep in mind as it relates to our incentive programs are one, they are self-funding. This does not come from any existing revenue source. um and basically they are uh they're also they're a community happening and the company has to sign an agreement saying they're going to make uh create the jobs and the investment or else they don't get those incentives much like been fast for example they have not gotten any incentives from chatham county because they haven't done what they promised to do so far can you describe an incentive for us sure uh incentives in essence are a percentage uh the new tech company comes in and promises to hire x number of people at or above our average wage they have to do that they also have to pay at least 50 of all their their employees health benefits and then they have to have to create those jobs in a certain period of time and then they pay their taxes and then ultimately for several years in a row maybe 10 years we give them a percentage of their own taxes back okay so again no it's it's nothing that's existing now that we're doing things here in pittsburgh or in the county it's it's all it's it's uh it's self-funded and performance-based those are the two phrases that show me what you're doing right right show me and then we can refund some taxes it's just like we've been passed not that we want to talk about them but that's an exact example of why these these um are set up that way if we'd have handed venfast a big check when it said they were coming and they didn't come we'd have a whole lot different conversation what's going on are these north carolina laws rules yeah the north carolina programs are very similar um so yeah that's the one difference while we're talking about venfast that we're fortunate of is that the state of north carolina invested in that site in terms of the infrastructure but what that means is if venfast doesn't come some other company can still go to that site and use that infrastructure that's there so it's very different again than if we just handed them a check when they said they were going to come we just unless we we gave we will we worked with Hampton Inns on their incentive program and it was tax base two plus employment also exactly and that's a great thank you for bringing that up because again when we went had that discussion I mean 10 years ago we didn't have a hotel and we wanted to get something and now that helped bring them here but again it gave them a percentage of what they paid we didn't just end up a check right exactly

Mr. Smith, I want to thank you for stating so very clearly that the failed attempt at auto manufacturing at the mega site did not receive any funding from the county and from the state either right because what they didn't get from the state is they they basically got some infrastructure help right um but that's the discussion now is getting that back that was also site-based wasn't it exactly just just the investments remain correct correct because it's it's a widely misunderstood

sure throwing dangerous things around thinking that that we actually wrote checks when we didn't and a good example that i'll share with you all that i've over the years i've heard and that and that's the uh the the pga big check myth and you know we see a golf tournament in the tournament somebody gets a big giant check and it gets handed that's not what we do in economic development they have to do they have to have a performance legal document and they have to perform thank you sure um again continue to talk about incentives um future development um this is a map that's just fabulous um this is the uh county's land use map you can see this map has a whole lot of green on it and it's also there that way so that's the uh cam site is on the uh the west uh the uh tip side is there on the east and then that's the uh apex gateway site so in essence you've got this 700 square miles of beautiful green space and our organization is completely focused on basically these three sites um and so and and we're focused on these three sites and yet at these three sites there's a significant amount of opportunity for for us all

I know that the county commissioners have tasked development in specific areas in the county, and you're kind of piggybacking those economic targets in those same areas, I see.

exactly exactly and and eventually goldsmith will have some opportunities as well uh but then the other the other big silver spot on this map is 3m and so 3m um they don't unless they tell us uh they're not planning on any expansion there and so that's the other other major industrial looking area on the space but you can see um it you know our our job is to focus on what's already available um and the other thing the good news i think if for people that aren't as excited about all this development is our development is focused in those three areas and it it doesn't do my office i mean we're not going through the middle of chatham county trying to find new sites because we've got as much as we can possibly handle and so i think if you aren't that excited about development that's actually a good thing because we're only focused in those three areas um And so that's kind of what this slide talks about. We've got almost 4,000 acres available for industrial development. That's a significant number. It is a huge number, but again, it's focused in basically two areas, but three areas for the purposes of this discussion, but that's less than 3% of the county's total land. And so we have this interesting dynamic of these numbers. We've got over 4,000 acres available. But then when you go back and look at our county, 4,000 acres in lots of places might be half the county. I don't know. But we've got this fabulous large county right in the middle of the best place for business in the country. And so it's an amazing opportunity that we have. I've been talking again about the state's attributes. I mean, it's amazing. We've been number one or two for the last six years in a row. We've also got a phenomenal workforce development program through Central Carolina Community College. And my last slide, is our favorite slide because we think this does a good job of talking about all of the fascinating things that are right here in chatham county and how close we are to so many different things in so many different directions and again i appreciate your support for our office and what we do and i'm happy to answer any additional questions you all may have could you go back to slide number 12 list of the industries

So my question is, I'm looking at all these and I was wondering, As Chatham is pursuing industrial development in that 3%, is water consumption, energy use, environmental impact, and infrastructure being incorporated into the recruitment of the industries? And what industries should Pittsburgh and Chatham be recruiting? Not just what can we attract, but what should we be recruiting out of this list? I don't think I'm going to get aerospace.

Yeah, ultimately aerospace will move in this direction. Certainly they've been very focused on Greensboro. But I think, again, I mean, the life science opportunities we have here is dramatic. I mean, one of the images that we used, we didn't use it today. I can send it to all of you. It shows the US 1 corridor and shows all of that life science that's in Holly Springs and then with us at the tip site and then just south of all the life science in Sanford. it's a perfect life science corridor and continues to be. And then on top of that, when you add in the Apex Gateway site that's right there on the Wake Chatham line, that's perfect for life science as well. Automotive, certainly depending on what happens with our Megasites, that's possible, but food and beverage, financial services, I think that, you know, ultimately we'll have a lot more office opportunities here as well, just because of the explosive growth of Triangle. And we're in such a fantastic place to live. But I think, you know, another thing that I think I need to be sure and say to this group is that we had something come in today, two different projects over probably 300 million total. And because of the type of industry it is, we're not going to submit anything because we fully understand where we are and what you all want and what you don't want. And so we're not going to throw darts at every single opportunity that comes through because, you know, we want to make sure it's going to be something that's a good fit for Pittsburgh. It's a good fit for Chatham County. And we also want a company to feel welcome. We don't want to have a fight over whether we want this type of operation or that type of operation.

yeah thank you yeah tire retreading or landfills or things like that we want to steer clear of the dirty industries I really appreciate the presentation I especially appreciate that slide on the higher costs of public service by land use type thank you for reminding the public and the board of that and i'd love to hear more details and metrics not necessarily i don't want to put you on the spot right now mr smith but if perhaps in a future presentation on details and metrics of what the edc is doing to help launch retain and grow local businesses

Sure, and I guess one of the main things in terms of small businesses, we believe that as we're bringing in these other larger operations, that's a great support for our business right here in downtown Pittsburgh. For example, when Wolfspeed was being built, there were 2,000 people out there building that building. And so there were multiple Pittsburgh companies that were feeding them, doing different things. it's a great cycle. And at the same time, we've got lots of great existing operations here in the area in terms of two different chambers, the Small Business Center at Chatham Community College and WebSquared. So there are four different existing organizations that are doing a good job with small businesses that we work quite closely with.

I'm glad to hear it. We heard a presentation from the Carnivore Preservation Trust. And while that's not a huge employer, it is a significant economic contributor. And that kind of thing, I think, is really important. And I wonder, for example, I happen to be aware of some speculation in the investment in dc fast charging infrastructure um and i've been told that pittsburgh is a prized location because it's a desert right now there is no dc fast charging infrastructure

is that the kind of thing that your organization would facilitate and and help find sites absolutely absolutely and and that's the thing is is having those two uh mega sites and then with land adjacent to them and then also the the buildings that are going up to apex gateway park uh we've got multiple different opportunities for for an industry like that okay you got you got a bite there

you have a company in mind um it's just a general uh industry probably wouldn't be appropriate for me to say the name of the company um i understand i'm not asking but yeah but um also i think uh given uh personnel changes i think that company might no longer be interested in this this town um but uh the assertion was made to me confidently enough that I'm, I am confident that our community is attractive to other developers. So, you know, and that's, you know, it's one and a half, $2 million a pop for, uh, an EV charging station, DC fast charging station.

That, that ultimately is coming back.

I mean, it's just, I hit a blip.

Yep.

Mr Smith, I appreciate the recent focus too on the like 3% of industrial land and kind of showing how EDC is focused on that, while you know, working with other partners on other types of economic development stuff, so I appreciate that alignment around the industrial land for the EDC.

Thank you, well again to me it's amazing to think about how 4,000 acres, and yet it's only 3% of this community. And it's spread out. It's not all in one particular area. So I think we're very, very fortunate.

So we as commissioners shoulder that burden of taxation. And the 93%, I think you quoted, of the taxes originated here.

is from residential and so uh your your efforts are well so i do appreciate you speaking with us thanks well glad glad to be a part of it and we certainly appreciate your support thank you thank you uh okay we have a presentation from nc idea uh about skill chatham so tom and rachel please

All right, thank you for your time this evening. As introduced, I'm Tom Snyder. This is my colleague Rachel Newberry. We represent an organization called NCIDEA, and I'll have some slides up here in a moment. But we are an economic development-focused organization, very complementary to the presentation that you just heard a moment ago. Our focus is on another kind of leg of the economic development school, which is really focused around entrepreneurship and job creation. So as this comes up here, when we first, I wanna give just a quick piece of history and then we'll get to the point of the conversation. But NCID is a foundation that's been operating for many, many years. When Rachel and I started working initially in this Pittsburgh area, we were part of an organization called Riot. that I founded in 2014 focused on technology-based economic development. Some of the stats and things that we've done are here on the screen. I'm not going to go through this in detail, but really the focus is on the creation of new jobs versus the transfer of jobs from one place to another place, which is often what some of the larger site development types of projects are. About 90% or 95% of net new jobs in the entire country are created by companies that are five years or younger. At the beginning of this year, our organization was acquired, if you will, and even though we're nonprofit, by a larger nonprofit in the area called NC IDEA. NC IDEA has been around for 21 years now. It's a private foundation that is primarily known for grant giving, non-dilutive grants to entrepreneurial companies, to startup companies across all of North Carolina, and to entrepreneurial support organizations and you can see a little bit of kind of the impact that ncidea has had over the years a key point is both riot and now ncidea are organizations that tend to work with companies you know in their first year or two of growth oftentimes when that company might have just a single employee or a very small group of people that then over time create the jobs of the future Technology-based economic development is where we operate. And if you're not familiar with TBED as it's sometimes summarized, it's really about the creation of high wage industries and generally technology focus. So technology doesn't necessarily just mean software or kind of office jobs. It's advanced manufacturing, it's smart agriculture, anything where emerging technologies they truly do steer the economy. Whether we like AI or not, it is changing the world that we live in, just to give one example. But we see emerging technologies in energy and transportation and logistics, other places. And the simple fact is that great places to live are places where we have really really high quality of life and that tends to be our restaurants and our retail our arts our entertainment the industries that that make places great places to live often those industries do not pay wages at a level that create a lot of disposable income to even support themselves right so the high wage industries create those high salaries they create the you know the disposable income that kind of supports the rest of the economy in some way and really support and grow the tax base and so t-bed we think of as kind of one leg of of three really really important pieces of economic health in a region. You've got the business recruitment, which is a presentation that you just heard a moment ago. And it's important to have the sites that large facilities can come to that we can hopefully attract those jobs from other places to this region. The technology-based entrepreneurship is really about creating new jobs in place and creating headquarters that as companies grow and scale, those companies tend not to move. If you look at the transference of jobs, it's almost always a satellite of a large company. It's not the headquarters that necessarily moves to the new site. It's some satellite operation. If you can get headquarters to form in your region, they tend to be think things that really stick uh in fact uh i was at a presentation recently where someone presented some data and showed that it tends to be at least three generations before a new company that starts in a place uh reaches a point that they could be recruited away from from your region and so as companies grow and scale you're looking at least a 50-year horizon of kind of their impact on on growing the technology and so on and so forth um and then of course there's also the you know the downtown um and main street kind of businesses and revitalization kinds of projects that are also important in the economic health of a region Our organization, as we've brought RIOT and NCIDA together, brings together programming and support for this kind of job creation, entrepreneurial job creation, through accelerator programs, through incubators, through ability to kind of help build support and connect resources to entrepreneurs and business owners across the region. We do everything from supporting kind of Main Street businesses that need to bring technology into their business to remain competitive and to scale and to grow. We're running a program called Foundations here in the area right now. We've got 23 business owners, some that are just starting, some that are maybe up to about three years into their businesses that are going through that. that program and then we also have on the ncid side the ability to to help with some of that startup capital uh you know how significant to someone just getting started might a ten thousand dollar check or fifty thousand dollar check be to help them to launch and to grow and to scale their their business and so you know across the work that we do we recognize that you need both mentorship uh connections and and capital Question for you, Tom. Yes, sir.

Trying to visualize what you're talking about. I love the idea, but I need help with... with exactly how it would be implemented. Sure. You can help me with that. So we have we have community workplaces like 79 West, for instance, that have community spots where you can meet and talk and generate ideas. Is that what you're talking about? And then at that point, you're you're pulling people in to a community based organization like that and then giving them capital funding through grants.

So we are a piece of a larger ecosystem. We don't operate space. We operate in partnership with space. So for instance, we've been working from Perch and running some of the programs from there. We've done some things with 79. It also requires storytellers. We have a storyteller in the audience that kind of helps to tell the stories of these companies. Because often when they go from employee number one to number two, the governor doesn't show up with a big pair of scissors for that event. But how do you do that? Part of our job is to really bring together lots of other stakeholders that are already doing great work across the region. And then our specific role is to provide coaching and mentoring and to run specific programs that kind of teach the founders how to build a really solid foundation under the businesses that they run. uh tech focused yes okay yes so i've got a case study on the screen here we've worked for a number of years in wilson north carolina with a regional approach wilson is a town of about 50 000 people but across eastern north carolina uh there there was there are entrepreneurs everywhere but not everyone had the kind of thing that we have saying research triangle And so as we work in there, in the Wilson area over a number of years, we've been able to see job growth, growth in the tech space. And if you've been out to that area recently, you see that area is booming with follow-on private investment. Through our work also, we help places to leverage federal funding. And so in Wilson, for instance, over the last few years, we've helped them bring about an additional $1.6 million from various federal programs in to support that community, help build out that infrastructure.

If I'm out talking to a person that has an idea, I send them to you? Yes. An incubator? Is that what you do? You help, you advise, you counsel, and they provide leverage, perhaps grants, opportunities. Is that how it works?

So yes, we would take referrals. for companies that we can support we we just help them directly we never charge any of the startups any money for our services we find other ways to to fund that in part through public sector funding through grants from the federal government from corporate sponsorships a range of different uh approaches as we're looking at this region uh we believe that there's a huge opportunity kind of across the sand hills and for pittsburgh to be the anchor or the hub if you will of that that regional approach uh that's part of what uh Jonathan Franklin has double-scaled Chatham. We think perhaps it could be even broader than that. Maybe it includes more Lee counties. We'll see as we continue to speak and talk to folks. I do want to address your grant point. We deploy a lot of grants. There's not a guarantee that every company would get a grant. There are competitive application processes. and so on but any companies that are awarded grants they are non-dilutive we don't take an ownership stake in any businesses we're not investors um and uh and that grant funding does not need to be paid back uh sometimes we will award those in tranches based on some milestones and so on how do you quantify success what is it that say doggone it we did a great job what is it that uh the town benefits when you succeed how does that work our north star metric is job creation which is common for many economic development focused organizations probably the next thing that i focus on is how long does that company survive when you look at venture-backed accelerator programs you may have heard of things like y combinator techstars organizations like that where the the educator is also taking invested business interest that sounds like a very aligned mission you know i own a part of the company i want them to be successful most of those programs if you look at three-year viability how is that company doing three years after they went through a program about ten percent of those companies are still alive because the investor is really trying to take and turn a company into an investment vehicle. And if they don't see that they're going to get their 10X return very quickly, they want to get out quickly before they put any more investment in. As economic developers, we think about long-term sustainability of business. And so through our programs over the years, we have about an 85% rate of companies that are still viable three years after a program. If you look at the NC IDEA work that has been going on for about 21 years now, we supported more than 650 companies. Not all of them are 21 years old. Some obviously have been more recent, but more than 70% of those are still viable. companies so we really are focused not necessarily on immediate returns for investors but on sustainable long-term job creation i don't want to put you on the spot but i'm wondering if you have like a

An example of one of your all-stars that you've helped.

At our own investment, we've run some initial programs in this area because we want to test and see what the market looks like. Do you want to talk about some companies?

Yeah, sure. So at this point, we've worked with um just north of 40 companies in programs that we've run here in pittsburgh here you see a number of companies that came through our accelerator program which is a 12-week program that we ran last fall a couple of stories we like to highlight mobile surveillance solutions is here in the region The founder, Brian, came to us with a business that was operating. But during the program, we helped win with a technical milestone. So they have kind of security stations that they based at construction sites that do surveillance and monitoring and preventing theft and things like that. And they had some units in the field, but they had some uptime issues. So they had about 60% uptime on their technical solution. We helped them to increase that to near 100% uptime. So that was a huge technical milestone. And then revenue wise, he grew by double digit percentage points in revenue during our program. And at the end of the program, he had a pipeline of about 40 units that customers were demanding. Today, if you look a year later, he's got 80 units deployed in the field with customers. So great growth from him. And I'll highlight one more, Infratech DC is from the broader region, so not directly Pittsburgh, but they have a solution for data center cooling to help data centers to operate with greater energy efficiency. It's a really high tech forward thinking solution, and they just closed 1 million in seed capital for the company. So these kinds of milestones are really indicative of what we support through our programs. It's revenue growth, team growth, technical sophistication to prepare these products for scaling and raising capital, things like that.

Yeah, so this is, as Rachel said, the data on this screen, this is from a program that's just about a year old. And usually, this economic growth, it takes some time. You don't immediately have a job a month or six weeks after you finish a program. It takes some time to build these organizations. But they do create momentum, and they do create an inflection point within a few years of significant impact in an area. Aside from the entrepreneurs that may be in the area, you're also experiencing a lot of inbound growth. You have a lot of residential housing that's being built. These kind of programs are good. If someone's coming into the area, say, to take a job related to some of the effort that we just heard from the previous presenter, you know, a trailing spouse, other folks like these kind of programs can create more economic opportunity as kind of a multiplier. on what you saw. And as we heard in the previous presentation as well, these high wage jobs absolutely have a halo effect of additional service industry jobs, restaurant jobs, entertainment jobs, et cetera, et cetera, in a healthy economy. I think that might be, yeah, this might be the last slide here is, We really see this opportunity for for Pittsburgh through the Scale Chatham Initiative to be kind of the recognized hub towards the Sandhills. It's close enough into the triangle that this isn't like a rural versus urban. The idea is to connect resources. We can connect and pull resources kind of out of the triangle into this region while also supporting to the south, to the west. to communities that really can be profoundly impacted by the creation of new high wage industries. Other questions?

Yeah, one more. Do you have any minority programs designed for those groups that are not as easily elevated?

Yeah, thank you for the question. First, I'll share that through our history, more than 60% of all the companies that we work with have at least one female minority or veteran founder. And we really focus the healthiest economies are the ones that have lots of diversity of industry, the healthiest places and best quality places live, have a diversity of options and things to participate in. And likewise, we think having diversity of thinking, different backgrounds, different founders and so on is extremely healthy. So we do focus on that and bringing people together rather than siloing like, hey, we're just going to do this thing just for women and so on. um but but i think that part of the reason that it's so important to partner with a number of organizations including established organizations in the area we think like web squared for instance is that you know we don't necessarily have the relationships and the trust of every community that we wish to support but there are people that have that that trust established so if we can build relationships with those kind of connecting organizations, if you will, then they can help invite people in and then we can work together.

Robust Chamber of Commerce. And you have our support. Well, I speak for myself, but you have my support in those endeavors as well. So thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, one quick note, the current cohort they're running, a pretty good amount of the folks that they accepted in the program heard about the program from the chamber, from an email the chamber sent out.

Great.

Any last questions? Thank you.

Thank you. I have a question for the staff. This is going to be funded, is that correct?

Yes, and we're working with the county and Siler City through a joint partnership to fund this, hopefully, every five years. The amount of funding that I would like Pittsburgh to put in is currently already in the budget, but we do want to check and see what Siler City and the county can put together, and then we'll move from there. And you've got a motion and an item later in the night to authorize me to engage with an NOU with the county and Siler City. Yes, sir. The current cohort, I think, is 23 businesses, a third from Pittsboro, a third from Chatham County, and a third from Milwaukee. So that's pretty impressive.

All right. A few more presentations and a few more things, but we will take a five-minute recess. Let's try and stick to that and keep things moving after that. Five-minute recess.

Well, no.

all right welcome back from our social group five-ish minute recess up next we have a presentation from chatham park on their annual update

I was just given the directive of five minutes or less. I'll try. Perfect. I don't know if I can do it. My name is Chuck Smith with Chatham Park. To be with you guys again, it's been a little while. Let's see, which will advance this. Quick explanation. Last year, when we were going through the small area plan process, One of the things that we were asked to do was to come in annually and just give an update, primarily in the South Village at that time, was the thinking. But since nothing has been done in the South Village yet, this is going to be more of a general Chatham Park update, and we'll focus on the South Village at the end of it. We've already heard from Mr. Smith, and y'all have at least talked to us previously, interested more in non-residential. So start off with this. Today, we've got almost 500,000 square feet of non-residential space on the ground, primarily in Mosaic and Northwoods, primarily made up with the grocery, retail, and restaurant space. The YMCA is included in that. But maybe more importantly, if you're aware of most of what's going on with that, we've got over 1.8 million square feet that we are actively working on in various stages of completion. Some things we can talk about, other things we can't really yet, but we'll get more into that in a second. That's a total of 2.3 million square feet. I know earlier we've talked about this number a lot in recent years, but Chatham County is over, as we've said, is over 90% residential tax base, obviously interested in growing that non-residential. When I looked at this a few months ago, I haven't looked at this recently, but we were more like, within Chatham Park, we were more like 70-30, 70% residential, 30% non-residential from a tax base standpoint. Not necessarily acres or anything like that, but tax base. But that's been a few months.

I'll just jump in there. Right now, I think the town of Pittsburgh is 68.3% residential and 30.3% commercial. So I think largely driven by a lot of these efforts as well.

um better numbers right that's an answer for that number um can you can you pull your microphone closer well thanks sometimes i wonder if people really want to hear me but of course we do what i wanted to focus more on this was the jobs um this is the non-residential existing non-residential that we've got here and um As I said, generally in Northwoods and Mosaic, UNC Health's a big part of that. Hampton Inn, obviously, is a big part of that. The examples, being in place, the grocery. But today we've got about 1,100, approximately 1,100 jobs. I think we've talked with somebody on the past, so I've got a list of that. I don't know if y'all have that list, but we've got a breakdown of that that we could keep up with. the future is first of all we're focusing in down in the bottom left corner we've got we've done a number of different looks at plans with us would be our first mixed-use village that's in the neighborhood area where the ymca is ymca is just to the uh northeast within this drawing this is chatham parkway fronting this edge The reason we're focused on this is because the anchor of this will be our next grocery store. We're very close to the point where we feel pretty good about a location here. But it's going to take about three years just to get through planning, design, permitting, construction before it can open. And that's about the timeline that we still have a non-compete with Lowe's of not being able to open a second grocery store. So we're at that point where that's going to be important. a milestone, and we're getting ready to move into that. This area right here is, we're calling it the Novi Village, North Village. This is a concept plan. The scale of this, if you're familiar with the Fenton project in Cary, it's about 75 acres. This is very similar to that from a size standpoint. We are focusing non-residential here um but we've also got most of our density that's going to be occurring in the north village will be here as well so it will all be starting out with multi-levels but eventually will evolve into that our inspiration for a portion of this and some of these photos if you've been to charlotte in the valentine area and seen the bowl It's a really active current thinking in terms of retail, but has been mixed use as well. But you can visit that and get a feel for that. Don't know that it's gonna, again, we've gone through eight or 10 concepts. on this and we're still working on it but I think thirdly the most important thing from a non-residential standpoint for us is the commitment that we've got for the for you and from UNC Health and the hospital if you look at any hospital development in the triangle and the non-residential development that occurs around that it just goes on and on and on it's not just doctors offices trying to be located there but it's hotels retail all the things that are needed around as a growing hospital so this may be the most important thing we've got going on um and disney's very important to us but i put the hospital right up there with them Education, you may know some of these things. You guys may already know these things, but I'm not sure if everyone does. But they're important to us. Education is one of the more important things we do. We've got two projects currently with the expansion of Thaley's. They're eighth to 12th grade expansion. And then we've been regularly meeting with Chatham County Schools as they funded a North Village Elementary School, a South Village Elementary School. Talk about the location of the South in a minute.

Can I stop you for a minute?

I don't know if it'll fit in the time.

It's my time. Can you go back one screen? I want to talk about you're building a hospital.

Thank you. I wanted to get back to building a hospital.

Go ahead. Expand on that. So we are a town of 6,000 people. So a hospital here is profound.

It is. It's profound for us, too. you tell us a little bit more about it well obviously i can tell you conversations we have i'll start off by saying that um hospitals and those kind of facilities they don't really want to talk about the word hospital because they will say in 10 years we're not sure what a hospital will be and so The only way I can wrap my brain around it is that it's going to be a hospital. And the facility might be 150,000 square feet of building and medical use. 750,000 on the site that we cleared and done some grading, but primarily clearing and getting ready for the first phase of construction. So it won't start off as a hospital. And if you see what's going on in Hillsborough and other places, I mean, you know, Hillsborough, but primarily Apex, other places where they start off with lesser building but medical uses before they get to that point. That's what at least the plan right now is without absolutely saying for certain. That's what UNC will do. They're hesitant to, if you called them in here right now, they'd say, I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe Vanessa will kick me in the back for even saying as much as I've said, but if I can. move on but finally to say about this at least planning with the school system they're looking at a 29 20 29 20 30 opening of the elementary school so we've been finishing up the infrastructure work around them so they they're able to begin their site work and that comes along before the construction of the school affordable housing. There's been obviously we've talked about really enjoyed your presentation, Mr. Foley. We have at this point got, as you see, 214 units registered. We've you know what's under construction at Chatham Parkway. and 64 business with 338 units there we've got another 84 units that are approved and seeking funding but looking for some sort i think some sort of tax credits or things that go fire tower road on fire tower road um we have we have met our threshold that we are required to make from an affordable housing standpoint for our first 5 000 units with the construction of that project that Shannon Parkway. So we're well ahead, and we are trying to remain ahead of our commitments. But anyway, we'll be talking more about that as we go along. The Parks and Recreation, again, most of these things you know about. We could not mention there we've got about two miles of greenway built. We have to provide a mile for every 700 homes. We're ahead of that schedule as well. uh obviously the to us the chatham park ymca one of the most exciting things we have in our project they have over 6 000 members you may have heard that number but incredible growth in a short period of time you see the pent-up demand that was is waiting for that to happen. Across the street from the Y is our Great Lawn. We've already started programming events there. It's an important space to us. It'll be an important community space. I'll say that's where we plan on having our community Christmas tree as an example. to have events around that. So again, programming is beginning. We've done a number of things already that are more on our scale, but that's going to continue, particularly as growth occurs and as we get further into the non-residential development and the park opens that's adjacent to it that Katie can talk more about than me. From a residential standpoint, over the next six years, we've got 4,700 lots that we feel pretty good schedule-wise in terms of planting. Now, obviously, this is all based on getting approvals and different things from you. We can't have this happen at this pace without you being involved in that. But these occur both in the north and the south. Most of it is in the north because obviously utilities are coming to allow it in the south other than Del Webb. They have utilities now. But what I would ask Jonathan if I could at least touch on this subject, because we've been working with him just to understand. You need to know that the cost of your services are being met with our development. I think Mr. Smith showed a slide that there's $1.18 for service cost for every dollar of one. of value tax value um for chatham park though that's not that's not the case um i think very preliminary numbers and you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but somewhere between $495,000-$500,000 value needs to be hit with a home in order to pay for the extension of the cost of your services. I think that's a preliminary number right now, but it's in the ballpark. He can verify that that's the case. We have our sales, we've gone back and looked at that. The average over all of our home sales is $547,000, so about 10% above that threshold to meet cost of services. And that's not the tax value, though. That's the sales. So I think the tax value, I don't think, I know the tax, just because y'all increase taxes so a number of those homes that were built before that the tax value was above the sales value so i think it's safer to say we're 10 to 15 percent above the cost of you extending and providing services just one clarification we did not increase taxes the county increased the value of your property our tax rates the reval um can talk a lot about that but i'm not that's not i'm replaced for that um Obviously, the most important thing residentially we're doing in the North Village is the Asteria neighborhood. I think you probably know most of this. The first phase is under construction. Over 500 lots. They've got streets paved. I think I'm correct in this that the first home sales will be beginning late 27, so a little over a year from now. The other images here are from their club. And this is incredible stuff. And if some of you have been through the presentations, the amount of detail, the amount of thought they put behind this is second to none. And you can tell from some of these images how this really is going to be good stuff. We're really excited about it because so much of what happens to us in Chatham Park is based on what's happening here with Asteria.

Just one thing about Asteria. That is, in my opinion, the prettiest doggone part of Chatham County that that hysteria is building on. And I know that you honor that and know that we as citizens of Pittsburgh, I'm speaking for myself, I shouldn't say we the citizens, But that is profound land. And I know you value it. I hope you will in the future. So I just had to point that out. That is the heart of Chatham County right there.

We would agree with you. I know some people would prefer to see something done differently in terms of the way, if you think it's valuable, then I translate it differently to different people. I will say we're not really part of this, but we are in the process of starting the design of the whole portion of the Hall River Greenway on our property there. That'll be the first Greenway built within Hysteria prior. I mean, that'll come online with the first homes as well. I think we've got to have it constructed. by 29, so we'll be building it and designing in 27, building 28, having it open. That'll be an important part of the Hall River Greenway. It's an important part of what's going on along that corridor, so we're excited about that. Now we're going to get more into the South Village. Most of you

i need to point this what's the blue lightning maybe use the mouse too then it can show on the screen as well

um infrastructure important part of opening up the south i'm only bringing this up i'm not sure since trial rivers has taken over water and sewer how much you're aware of schedules or construction scale and schedule with chatham parkway uh the first phase which will be from 64 business down to 15501 through the south that they are ahead of schedule and will open in nine months. I think they're even a little bit ahead of June of 27, but that's an important part of this. The north section, basically, that's from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock, from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock, as you look at the clock. The north is first quarter of 28, I believe, in opening, so that entire distance within a year and a half, a little less than that, we'll entirely be open. So that's gonna be important for a number of reasons, not only for us, but I think traffic-wise, downtown and other things related to that. um you know that the sewer has been under construction from sanford uh that is scheduled to be complete a little less than a year now uh water will be be in construction in the first quarter of 27 that's big water we would be building um water serving the south village left smaller lines but there's still capacity We would be building that as part of Chatham Parkway construction and in order to be able to serve the first development plans coming in. Triggers happy here. We submitted three now going on to what's coming soon in the South Village. We submitted three section design plans. You may be familiar with that. One is they're tracking a little bit different schedule for all three. The first one is the heart of the South. You just hover over this thing and it moves. Sorry. For our golf course community, that just made up about 1,400 acres, 1,400 units, and about 325,000 square feet of non-residential down in the bottom left corner there. That'll be a mixed-use village portion of that project. The next two sections, Section 4.1 is about 110 acres. That's in the middle of the Del Webb community. We'll look at that in a second. And then Section 4.3 is further up Chatham Parkway, 236 acres. They will fall behind the middle as we move forward with section design plans. a website that you are familiar with. The first lots coming online in the south will be in Del Webb because we've had sewer in our plant to serve them until sewer came from Sanford and Sarai River. There's about 2,100 units associated with the Del Webb, two Del Webb communities, and a separate amenity for each north of China Parkway there and south of China Parkway are two separate Del Webb communities. Really incredible. amenities on that. I will say we had a we did very strategically look at I'll talk about this a little bit more when we're talking about the climate action plan, but I'm very strategically looking at the YMCA being a focal point of amenities in our project as opposed to a private club that could only serve certain people. We felt there was a more of an equitable statement there. There's certainly great facilities with the Asteria and with Del Webb. There will be more of those kind of for people who want those, but not everybody wants those. And also not only would you're in different stages of life, you move into wanting to be part of a club to kids moving out and you don't, you know, use tennis courts and pools and, you know, we've all different experience that in different ways. So that was some of our thinking, but also keeping the cost of HOA news down. Public facilities, obviously, some of you have been part of this. But we've already talked about roads, water, and sewer. Two fire stations are in the south. There's actually, well, we'll start with, we've got one that is, you conducted a fire study with a third party consultant. They identified locations. Jay, you probably know more about that than I do being part of that. But one of those is just one of the sites that is taking a north fire station responsibility is just adjacent to our water recovery center on Business 64 as you come into town. The second one is now, I think, Jonathan can correct me if this is not completely true, but I've been working with the fire department along Gum Springs Road on the east side of the golf course community. Far east, that fits in another location approved by the consultant. So those two are the next two, at least. I don't know that the one to the east will be built anytime soon, but the location has been identified and approved. Third, elementary school. See the location here, this is adjacent to Montcure-Pittsboro Road. And this is, school has given us letters that they don't, aren't looking for sites related to the first three research and design plans, but this is the site that they're focused on right now. They're going through their analysis of, it's a funded site. um or a funded project in the south village elementary but they're still determining if this is going to be the site we think it will be um for parks you were part of the uh all of these in terms of approving locations for those um and then finally tri-river has settled on a water tank site that is just off of the screen as you see up here to the northwest it'll be close to moncure pittsburgh road a little bit uh south of chatham parkway south of e-banks um but within that a neighborhood we have there uh adjacent to section 3.1 by hour if you know that section numbers in in the south village so the section design process is well i think this is consistent with what you were looking for when this was when this originated a year ago but we've gone through a process of moving things around adjusting to where the staff wanted to see things adjusted i think to where you want to see things and now we've settled on some things that we can then design neighborhoods around so that was the first that was an early step making that making that happen I wanted to talk about this. This was obviously a lightning rod in many ways. We were talking about the small area plan because there's this perception that Chatham Park, the size of what we're doing is harmful to the climate, to sizes, and you don't get an opportunity to Tom Gregoire- weigh in on things certain things happening, I think our scale is what enables us to do some things and I don't know if you've got a copy of turned in a copy of our climate action plan of trust that you know we do okay. Tom Gregoire- i'm not i'm just going to since you've got that i'm just going to highlight a few things um. We've actually been working on this since the beginning. Many of the pillars, we've got three pillars, climate, biodiversity, and advocacy. Much of that detail is in our elements, water, riparian buffers. more trees being protected um we can get in you know obviously there was a lot of public comment about whether there's enough of these things but compared to other development and in an urban setting we feel we feel pretty strongly that we're doing some pretty good things and when you look at the totality of the plan that we've put together there's a lot that has occurred not just we're putting some things together but a lot has already occurred two examples here most people know about is the five megawatt solar farm that we've got in the south village supplying clean energy to over 750 homes um and secondly our water our water recovery center 500 000 gallons per day water recovery center that we're conserving water through wastewater reuse This is really, I really enjoy this and I don't know if you kind of looked at the little analytics within some of the data here. This mitigating greenhouse gas emissions again through community planning. We've created our ECHO Select residential energy rating system that all of our homes have to be built by. um you can see if you look at that this uh it's a the average per score for our homes of 60 average home is 100. so when you look at the the information to the right of that the cumulative energy savings compared to what if you meet north carolina building code standards which is a great with the houses that we built at this point. So about 2 million square feet of houses. We're ultimately building 55 million square feet of houses that will have energy savings associated with them. These numbers right here are only dealing with that first 2 million square feet that have been built. So when you look at 2.7 million pounds of carbon emissions avoided already just with that amount of construction, that's an important statement. um looking at that offsets you would plant 31 over 31 000 trees to offset carbon generated by the difference in the standard building and what we are building um that's a strong statement and since you know we aren't we don't build non-residential buildings but we do have houses being built that we have some influence about how they're built. This is a pretty, to me, is a pretty strong statement about what we're doing from a climate standpoint. Also, develop sustainable multimodal low carbon communities. That's what we're doing. that says 55 miles we've looked at we're over 62 miles we got 30 miles of greenway 32 miles of multi-use paths multi-use paths becoming more of a more in vogue in terms of i think i don't know that it's in your standards yet but we're being required to do it more and more with with our plans uh since they're 10 basically 10 sidewalks closer to the street as opposed to going through the woods but it reduces area vehicular dependency by providing those those kind of facilities the other thing that's been kind of exciting that's again you don't see it happening much but we are using on-site rock whether we're crushing it using in our road constructions, whether we're using in some retaining walls, that reduces embodied carbons from bringing in other manufactured aggregates. Important, you know, again, this is maybe getting into the weeds, but I think these are important things given the perception that we weren't doing anything. And I disagree with that. The Biodiversity is the second pillar that we're focusing on, and it works hand in hand with climate. Nature-based systems for climate adaptation. Our standards that we built a different type of street when we have a planting strip adjacent to the street, sidewalk behind it. Walking safer behind those trees, more trees, more shade on the street. That reduces and helps mitigate local heat island effects. We are using some areas of the right-of-way for stormwater devices. We have tree wells, if you've really looked at those when you've been out there. Those are part of a green infrastructure statement that we're making and we think is important. Again, it takes a project of our scale to be able to do it. You can't require people to do that because it's so expensive. We can't do it everywhere, but we can incorporate it in what we're doing. Again, we have a goal to protect and restore 30% of existing and degraded ecosystems. Our repair and buffer requirements are a big part of that. I don't think the state allows you to require more tree protection and other things right now, but we still have that as our requirements. uh so we've got expanded standards on that compared to others again using green so you've seen out there grass swales you've seen constructed wetlands different things that we've done that are out of the ordinary traditional stormwater design there's a big part of that too and there's been some question from why would you give credit for preserving on-site soils. That's an important part of a biodiversity plan and trying to, we can't require it. We're trying, we encourage it with our stormwater scoring system. And that just increases out of the amount of, that soil, topsoil that we're able to retain. And then we've also established a while ago a conservation easement at Stinkin' Creek to help preserve and protect the ecosystem there. I'll just say this is not a small point. Again, big projects. We're going through individual permitting uh for the south village in terms of with the core of engineers in terms of what we're able to do from extreme impacts a one acre if you were developing one acre of land without going through the permitting process you could get 300 feet of stream impact that would that would come to you without going through any sort of uh formal process more with the with the core we we have in our plan at this point we will have 1.2 feet per acre of stream impact in the south village that we will we are permitting so what's that one three hundredth a little one two hundred and fifty much but again looking at a larger scale you're able to do those kind of things and if you're going at it a little piece at a time so again i think it's an important statement um I think this was the last slide. in biodiversity to deploy site enhancement that restore native flora and fauna. You've talked about with your own leaf proclamation or resolution proclamation. Yeah, that's an important thing. I mean, it was important enough to you to do what you did, but it doesn't just, you have to encourage, that's part of the advocacy part of this, that you're having to encourage people to do this. We have our own standards that we are requiring pollinators, pollinator plants to be, put back into the landscape after clearing occurs as you're restoring your landscape. Native plant requirements, warm season grass requirements. You've heard about, you've probably all received honey from us, from our honeybees. And Without getting into this, you may wonder what we would be doing from an advocacy standpoint. This is one of the more interesting things I've been able to do. We're part of the Urban Land Institute's Master Plan Community Council, again, because there are a number around the country. We come together twice a year to talk about projects. Almost unanimously, every one of those are quality of amenity driven. That's the most important thing, safety, cleanliness, quality. And we go in talking about these and talking about sustainable issues. We talked about the why is starting to catch on as a concept. But again, it was a more equitable statement than providing things that only a certain view could be part of. It's starting to catch on around the country as we talk about it. So that's where I'm talking. We have been able to advocate for certain things that we would not have been able to if we're doing 100 lots of divisions. So this was getting a name on the map. And I think, Mr. Bonnets, you just referred to that, that your people are interested in providing certain kinds of amenities and facilities here. Good things are happening. Sometimes it may not feel like that at the particular moment, but they are coming. So that's more than my five minutes. I apologize for that. don't get an opportunity to do this much and felt like we should take advantage of it so thanks clarifying question you said uh your presentation says 55 miles of greenways but you verbally said i think you said 32 miles of multi-use paths and 30 30 everything like 10 in the north 20 in the south and then north and south multi-use is 32 30 and 32.

I just came across a peer reviewed study on pollinator and solar farms at the same time. And as it turns out, there is a study out that says the best way to encourage pollination and also species variation is to plant local grass and local wildflowers around your your uh your solar your plant instead of cutting the grass and all of a sudden you have all this beautiful new species of insects and and you say local but you're really you're talking native i mean native is important exactly yeah native

so i don't know if you're doing that but well we're going to throw that out say we have a lot of control over strata um and i'm not so i can't tell you that they've i know i read that it's still going on and maybe not exclusively but they but they were yes and they we as much as we can encourage sometimes we kind of control but One thing that's in the plan that you have before you, but we're in the process of developing a developer's guide to sustainable development in shadow parks. Other people coming in, doing these things. Again, we're going in the direction of a scoring system to be able to do, require without requiring, if you will.

All right up next we have a presentation on the ropes and creep master plan.

Y'all have in your packets the master plan and you're able to take a look at it. I'm only going to focus on one. This is the final concept and I want to make sure that we first and foremost just have a big disclaimer and understanding to on the master plan just so just so we remember that master plans in itself, these are. These are ideas, these are potentials of what to go into right, this is not saying hey, we have to do every single thing that is on this. this plan, right? This is concepts. What we did is we went and we talked to the public and our stakeholders and we had several public information meetings. And this is what was determined by our community of saying, these are the things that we wanted. And then when the designers came in and say, okay, if these are the priorities for a passive part, this is the flow of what you want them in right uh based off a topography for you know certain things for like a pump track and where you want it to be centered around um and that type of thing so and full connectivity and balancing your pace path versus your all natural paths and at full build out if we were to ever do full build out, 85% of it would still remain undisturbed. So wanna make sure that we're putting that in there as well. This is going to be our primary passive part. We really wanted to make sure that we are keeping this passive and giving that very much natural exploration type space. this is also going to do full connectivity right this is eventually whatever if you zoom out there's going to be a lot of things going in the surrounding area development wise and so it was vital for us to want to make sure to have a plan to where we could really focus on where we were going to maximize our connectivity as a whole so again just want to make sure Sometimes I think that it gets overwhelming whenever you see this like Oh, this is really beautiful it's really expensive, this is not saying. We have to do this, this is saying hey we can do some of these things we could do a very phased approach on it, we do want Lenore I know the. um to the left of at the top they still have some things that they are required to build including the parking lots and bathrooms a little bit of the connectivity of a greenway so right So this, on the other side, there's a greenway that's gonna be connecting through the South Village. So this is gonna be a good part of the plan to have in place to understand really where those connections are going to be best placed.

A question for you. We have a method, we have a understanding with, what's the group that's doing the- Pre-wild. Pre-wild, thank you. Their process is going to end in what, six months? Is that four months, five months? What's the method of understanding? What's the timing on it?

I think they're going to get started on their next phase shortly and then go into April when the ticks come out, which is, I think, when they came out last time. So the next phase, I think, what's going to- They don't necessarily have an end date.

But she just- That's what we're asking.

She's getting started soon, right? Did she submit a plan to you? Yeah.

And I'm not saying having to rush this, but I'm wondering why we're talking about either respectfully i'd much rather focus on town lake park for a park i don't see a lot of foot traffic what are we doing here that we that can't wait till after we do some more clearing

So I'll say two parts to that. First part with Town Lake, we do have some funds that we have payment and lose and that that's already on our list and we are already on the works for that because that is, I told Jonathan the other day, he was like, oh, we got some things. And I was like, nope, don't touch it. We are focusing on prioritizing Town Lake. um that is something from the community that has always been a priority and that is my priority as well um may i think she just stepped out she mentioned that there could be something potentially that would help with some of the flooding study that could also have some additional funding that we're going to meet that would also help potentially speed up that process i thought we were going to put this away for a while so i think that the only reason why that this is and we're looking for approval right now for this is because we have other things that are coming up specifically for lenore and meeting they they have to build it's in their developers agreement that they have to build the parking lot and they have to build the bathrooms and so much of a part of it for here and we were just looking to say okay if this is a grand scheme of thing where is it going to be best located

that's it okay so i didn't mean to interrupt but i i just i know that this this 72 acres it was kind of like we're going to work on this at a later date and yeah and so why is it here today what is it that is it the parking lot or what are we what do we want to look at where you're never closer to your number 13 and where you're seven

right and then we would look at where some of that depending on how much their connectivity is the square footage the multi-purpose to see if we can go and do at least a little bit of the loop

So we're actually providing a service for development that's coming in. And that's what the, not a service, but an amenity is a better word for it, for a development that's going to be built there. I think they're going to build it.

You need to tell them where to build it. You need to decide now where to build it.

And that it will provide additional parking for the plant. And then it also is a piece in the Greenway from downtown.

Yes. Totally up to date. Thank you.

There's also a Greenway connection to the south that we want to try to figure out where that best point is. So really, we're just trying to get the nuts and bolts completed. So when these developers show up, we can say, put that there, put that there and put that there.

OK, thank you. I have the big picture now. My apologies. It's late.

It's all good. It's Monday. It's Monday.

Not for much longer.

That's what you brought me in now to pick it up a little bit. I'm your caffeine.

Thank you, Katie. I love you.

And to kind of further answer some of y'all's concerns with wanting to make sure we're spending money appropriately in the right places at the right time. will have to do an rfq or an rfp to figure out how we get that baseline design done and that will come to you all so you all will see what exactly we're looking at you also will see exactly what that will cost so at that point if you decide to not move forward then you can't but we do kind of need direction to keep it going and an approved master plan enables us to get grants and other things yeah

One question, Kate. Would the multi-use trip section, will it have to be built in during this section with the parking lot and all? Because doesn't it tie back in with the, sorry, playgrounds?

Yes. Yes. We've still got to figure all that out because they're on the hook for 2,700 linear feet.

So on the fairgrounds property, some of that is going to have to be a boardwalk. So, you know, a linear foot of boardwalk is not the same as a linear foot of just level surface, right? So we've got to figure out an agreement with them on how we get that done. And then if there's anything left over, I think that's where Katie wants to say, cool, you've got 500 feet left over. We'd like you to put it right here. And when they're ready to build those bathrooms in that parking lot, same, like, here's our design, put it right here. And same with the southern connection to the Greenway going to the South Village. OK, just trying to say that again.

Any other questions?

Apologize. Yeah, I've got a whole lot of them and concerns. And I feel like we really need to, I'll echo Commissioner Foley's thoughts, that we need to put this on hold. uh i think we need to meet the immediate need of approval of location of parking and obviously start moving forward with the greenway um and i suppose the bathrooms also have to be cited um the other aspects of it um i'm very uncomfortable with proceeding as if it is uh the finality of a plan um the reason is that i think so much of what what i hope to come out of the next six months of work by rewilding within is an understanding of what's there in the park a deeper understanding of we've already discovered chatham county's largest black walnut a champion black walnut tree right next to that or near it is a cluster of trees that are just magical and um it's not like these were unknown to humans but it's been 50 or 75 years since they were last appreciated And there's a lot of other things that we will be discovering in this park. We discovered two beavers. I photographed them. The existence of those beavers gives me pause to making any infrastructure investments or developments that would encourage large numbers of people to go into the park because beavers and humans are kind of a risky thing to mix up. And humans have been injured by messing around with beavers and beavers were there first beavers do tend to come and go um but i reached out to some beaver experts in north carolina i just think you know there's so many things that we need to learn more about What I'd be willing to do is have a deeper conversation on this at our workshop that we're going to schedule for the town hall. And we can get closer to what we really must do right now, which is decide on placement of parking and bathrooms. So that's my preference.

there's been significant effort put into all these plans and public input like we talked about previously lots of lots of public input and we often talk about advisory board recommendations as well and there's a unanimous recommendation from the advisory board And I think that the master plan is, as Katie said, it doesn't require any of this stuff, but it enables future planning. There's certainly nowhere in here in the sense that we're going to, you know, cut down a champion tree that's discovered or things like that. So, I mean, I think that to kind of put a pin in the work that's been done at this point for the master plan is really important. And then we'll work from there on what this looks like as it builds out over time. And we have the the funds and the ability to do that as the additional things develop but um yeah i think we we do need to be careful about decisions but we also need to make decisions as well and continue to move into other decisions fair enough and and i'll say in response to that mr mayor that uh this is not the decision that i'm wanting to make right now emphatically

um so um and i feel like i've heard from a lot of constituents who feel similarly um and we haven't made a big stink out of this but um i think that we need to proceed with caution and uh solidify the plan for parking and bathroom locations and get things moving forward with the greenway But I think that we need to table this master plan until after we have a deeper understanding of what the land is inside this park.

I don't know that we're responsible to prove just tiny portions of the plan about the rest of the plan either. There's been so much effort that's been put into this as a whole that's come to us multiple times and on the community multiple times. Concerns are brought up, change is made.

I'd like to hear a little bit more about the feedback from our constituents.

I've been in this area. I know

I know originally this was sold like we're going to keep this as it is. We're not going to put any effort in it. And now we have a master plan. And all of a sudden, I just want to hash it out. I want to make sure that we're doing the right thing. I see how much work this is by your staff. I see a profound how much it would take intellectually to plot this out. But we as a board need to be certain that this is a priority or is not a priority. And so if you give us a grace and we bring it to a work session so we can hash it out, we can absolutely understand what the pros and the cons are. I would welcome a work session with that. It's a democratic must in my eyes.

Katie, can I ask you a question? We know that there's at least one home site that we saw there, and I've heard that there's potentially other home sites that might be out there and even a potential cemetery. Let's just say that when Rewild goes in, they do discover that and that's right where the pump track is going to be or something or wherever. is the is the cost of having to go back to the drawing board to redo this um it should something like that be found i mean is that going no

What we would do is if there's something and we can say, go back to the public and we can say, if this is still a priority, where else would be a more ideal place given the location to where it would still flow and make sense, right? I don't foresee that being, yeah.

I defer to the people that are more involved in it than I am with this effort. I understand the staff has planning issues to do with the trails and with Lennar's development coming in. But I also have responsibility to the people that I represent. So I'd like to hear a little bit more about it before we make a decision.

And just a side note is like, because I've heard this a couple of times, and I'm not really sure where that's come from, is, you know, you mentioned the black walnut, is those trees that are there that are large and beautiful, those would never be cut down. More than anything is... we would look at those and find ways to enhance them. Whether that would be something to where we would have strategic lighting or have a little feature that would really showcase their beauty and things like that and find a way to integrate a feature in it to really have some chairs sitting at the bottom so you could just really just sit and relax, right? Or some type of, there's another national park that, someone I know was going to and they had these beautiful lounge chairs that were just like, I would have never thought that putting a lounge chair, right? And it just looked so, it didn't look out of place right and so thinking of somebody to provide theirs where you could just sit and relax or you know hammocks around or something but that would never be an option so when we find these sites that we're like hey we want to enhance this area yeah that's the beauty of the master plan this is not a we have to do it this way when we go and we're walking and we're finding areas that we really want to preserve we don't have to just say No, we can't do it because this is not on the master plan. That's not what this means, right? This is just saying, hey, pump track would be ideal in this area because the topography is nice here and it's closer to the parking lot to where, especially if you're a younger child and you want to have a bike, it's close to the parking lot, so it's right there, right? You're not having to haul it all the way across the park.

This is the entrance to Pittsburgh, isn't it? I need two weeks. That's not inappropriate. Two weeks so we can hash it out. I wanna hear from my fellow commissioners.

If we don't wanna do it here, we can do it in two weeks.

I already have one opinion and I respect it, but I'd like to hear from the rest of us just to see it. What's this really about?

According to my notes, this is the sixth meeting that we've considered this item. Not in this, sorry. But, you know, I think if there's targeted questions, then, you know, we should address them.

My biggest hard question I'll answer you is why are we doing this now when we have other parks that need attention? We have already been told that this park is something that we're going to be referring to for years. And all of a sudden we have a final concept. And that's my point. Why all of a sudden are we doing this?

i think final is a difficult i mean it's a it's a master plan it's a master plan um just like we have master plans in a lot of other places i mean going back to i think march 25 is when we talked about a fiscal year 26 goal of having this completed in conjunction with a lot of other parks that are being planned throughout all of town and additional improvements to parks connection with greenways and all those other things so this is not the i guess the repetitive nature of the meetings is potentially taking time from other things but we are working on plans for town lake park we are working on greenway connectivity throughout the area but we've got to get some of those to a point in the process that then we can move on to other things we can approve this plan and then see what that implementation looks like begin to look at prices begin to look at grants all of those things um if we never make it past the master plan process we're just going to keep talking about it i'm asking to give us two weeks move that we table this until the planning board excuse me the uh the workshop uh two weeks from today second motion second any discussion yeah i have a little bit of discussion um

we've had numerous weeks to bring up any issues with this master plan and uh if any board members have not sent katie any information why are we waiting two more weeks this is a concept final plan it's i mean i don't understand the delay i mean i don't think we're going to be disturbing the beavers we're we're looking for a design concept to get this rolling with the developer just so we can match our other greenways and that's i just don't understand the delay sorry it has been this has been brought katie's brought this to us numerous times any other discussion

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye

anybody else be opposed all right let's do it good evening uh good evening mayor and board this is conditional zoning case uh pb 26 215 otherwise known as the intrepid build property The subject property is approximately 4.047 acres and is located southwest-ish of the Hall River Filtration Plant along Highway 15, 501. The property is currently developed with a single-family residence, detached garage, storage shed, and swimming pool. The property is currently zoned from Rural Residential Agriculture, which is the RA2 district. The adjacent zones of the Shexton North are Rural Agricultural District, which is the RA5, and to the southwest and east is all RA2 as well. The applicant is proposing to rezone the property to community mixed center conditional zoning, so CMUCCZ. The intent of the Community Mixed Use Center is to provide lands that accommodate moderate to higher intensity auto accessible development that's appropriate for a highway commercial area to serve the town and the region. So the Pittsburgh land use map classifies the subject property as residential. And so therefore the proposed rezoning to community mixed use center CMUCCZ is inconsistent with the current classification for the future land use map. But in this specific case for the conditional zoning, the proposed conditional zoning is consistent with the overarching goals of our comprehensive plan, our land use plan. in our udo that concentrates smart growth around transportation corridors and connects different uses or a combination of uses however for the specific site since it is future land use classified as residential it's inconsistent with the land use classification. But again, for this, this is a new condition. State law NCGS 160605 says that the board of commissioners can approve a rezoning that is inconsistent with the future land use map. And in doing so, it would automatically amend the future land use map to be in harmony with the rezoning. The applicant conducted a community meeting on March 31st, 2026, and the community meeting report is attached to an email packet. A full list of the proposed uses and zoning conditions can be found on page two of that staff report. And the applicant is primarily proposing residential uses, live work dwellings, along with office and community oriented and some recreational uses as well. And the permitted accessory uses would include accessory dwelling units, swimming pools, spas, or hot setups. And there are two conditions that I want to speak to directly included in your SAC report, and that's about noise and development intensity, just because we are in the ETJ currently, and it's around the rural residential agricultural districts. So for any agro-recreation facility, the condition excludes wedding venues and concerts or parties that go past 10 p.m. As well as an outdoor lighting condition that says any outdoor lighting would be shut off by 10pm. So kind of limiting that light pollution that would bleed onto other properties. Another condition specific to this project, so if the property is redeveloped, the entire site is limited to a small driveway access just to limit the ingress and progress points to Highway 15501. a good permitting practice to make sure that there's one spot and you're not adding more driveways onto a highway. And so cleaning staff recommends approval of the conditional zoning case And the planning board met on August 17 and recommended approval of the conditions in the case as offered by the applicant. And I would be very happy to answer any immediate questions since the applicant is here as well to kind of talk through their applications as well.

um good evening board and uh members of and may i'm sorry i could be mayor and I know it's been a long night, so I won't go through everything. I know you have a new packet as well. But just really quickly, I'm Tyler Stinson. I'm a project manager with Intrepid Build. Been with Intrepid Build for a little over a year. We're a small team under GC right here in Pittsburgh. We're working very hard to have this as a space to bring our team together. Right now, we're on multiple job sites, multiple office spaces, and sometimes even mobile offices. This is an opportunity for us to collaborate together, work together, train each other, as well as look to expand our team. Of course, as we grow, we want to bring new members on. This would give us an opportunity to build out an office and as well as look to bring on additional team members so that we can continue to grow. With that said, also look at helping the community grow. I pride myself in the community very much here in Chatham County in Pittsboro. Being a former department head and director for a local government in Chatham County, as well as being on a few advisory boards i definitely appreciate local government town staff and commend all of y'all on what it takes to be in these roles they're tough hard decisions that we've made but with that as well a decision like this is strategic So when you're looking at a decision to be made as a board, you're thinking on multiple fronts. For this specific piece of property in this parcel, our goal is to, one, make this our office, but it also wants, I want this and our team wants this to be a place we can bring community. um we don't fully understand what that may be yet but we all pride ourselves with our connections our relationships in the community so that's what we want to build upon as well additionally on our presentation we didn't prepare a presentation on what it looks like yet but we know that this is a great property for us to build our team and to build something very special um we also don't plan to disturb the existing structure at all and that's a something that comes up quite often when we when we talk about the property so that's not our goal as well if you have any questions

Tyler, thank you for that overview. I'll just dive right in and say I'm going to signal very clearly I'm inclined to support the proposal. I'm eager to make the motion for it. But acknowledging that this is merely a rezoning,

would you care to share with us a little bit more elaboration about what construction actually would happen on the site so i'm not going to oblige you to anything so just give us ideas that we're having right now because nothing there's no plans no no uh drawings made up or anything yet um our main goal is truly to to go inside look at making it compliant with commercial structure and making it office spaces for us as well as looking at some type of conference area where we can bring clients friends and individuals that want to learn more about Intrepid and be a space that we can conduct our business as well as be a community hub in a sense to just build on networking and our relationships with this community. That's our goal. Nothing immediate of construction. It's really just to get this space to an office space set up for us.

Mr. Mayor, I'd just like to reiterate, even though this is a conditional zoning, the representations of the applicant are not something that you all can rely upon. You are to determine whether or not this property with these is appropriate for the uses that have been listed.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Tyler, hey. Hey, John.

First off, are you going to keep the pool? Well, I'm, well, coming from local government, I am a certified pool operator. Okay. If I'm guessing one person right, pools are very challenging. I do think we are going to make an effort to keep the pool, but that may change. Okay. That's a good political answer.

My biggest concern is aesthetics. I can't really gripe a lot because you're right next to the water treatment plant. So there's not a lot of, but you are at the entrance of Pittsburgh. And so we, I, as a board member, I would love to see aesthetics that match our community.

And to kind of expand on that, that's something that we want as well. So as being a general contractor, We would love to be the builder of Chatham County in Pittsburgh. We know that this property is right near Chatham Park, right near Styria, right on the entrance of 15501 to Pittsburgh. It's a very good location, but we would take pride in being something that's beautiful as people are coming into Pittsburgh. I can assure you that.

Is there an architectural standard condition that you're proposing to add? I do.

I think, you know, I wanted to, I'm Zachary Coffey, owner of Intrepid Build. Our goal is to take a lot of the sentiments of a lot of the development discussions here and take them into full account, right? You know, I'm a lead IP personally, right? So, you know, trying to reuse and repurpose and do as much to, you know, satisfy those goals, huge, right? Also the aesthetics. That house, historically, I mean, whether anybody wants to admit it or not, it's got significance in the community. Everybody knows it. The families that have lived in there, we want to pay homage to that as well, right? but uh factually you know we we do have to bring our operations into modern standards in terms of risk and quality of workspace and things like that so um we're going to be significantly modernizing kind of our approach to how that is gonna all come together. But in terms of your architectural question, I think that the dialogue's open. You know, if there's a certain aesthetic that's being looked at, one that needs to work with what you guys have going on, you know where to find us. I mean, we're not planning on making any immediate changes to road frontage at this juncture. There's absolutely no mentality there. What we would be working to do is working on the backside of the property. It's kind of blind from the public view anyways. That's where we're gonna have our main entry, which is kind of in the vision. So there you go. Any other questions or comments?

all right no one has signed up to speak for the public hearing so i'll take a motion to close the public hearing thank you commissioner farrell second second commissioner thurber all those in favor say aye all right can i make a motion to adopt the order of the conditional zone in pb 26 that's 215 intrepid building second thank you and a second by commissioner bonnets all those in favor say aye aye all right motion passes next we have a public hearing pb 26 370 property rezoning i'll take a motion to open the public hearing

moved thank you commissioner farrell second second commissioner thurber all those in favor say aye aye back again back to back um so this is conditional zoning case pd 26 370 otherwise known as the handsome property This subject property is approximately 0.4 acres and is located north of Walgreens and south of the Newtown Hall site. It's right across along East Salisbury Street. To the west is single-family residential, or sorry, to the east is single-family residential, and to the west is some office and commercial spaces. The property is currently developed with a single-family residence. This was surveyed by the architectural I think Chatham County architectural, but it was not listed. So it was never entered into SHPO or the State Historic Preservation Board. It has a detached metal storage shed. So the property is currently zoned high density residential, which is the R10 district. And the adjacent zoning districts to the northeast are also R10. And to the south is a neighborhood commercial CC, which is the Walgreens site. And to the west is White Industrial, as well as Highly Commercial, just C2. So the applicant is proposing to reserve property to office and institutional conditional zoning. And the intent of this office and institutional, my goodness, is to provide lands to accommodate a mix of office and institutional, as well as some small-scale retail, multi-family development, City Council Chambers, General development that will serve as a tradition transition between higher density issues and residential districts. City Council Chambers, But it's early newsman classifies the subject property as downtown support, and so this proposed rezoning to office institutional is consistent with the language classification. The applicant conducted a community meeting on June 11, 2026, and the community meeting report is in your file. A full list of the proposed uses and zoning conditions can be found starting on page two of that staff report. The applicant is proposing some residential uses, such as living room, single family, duplex, or townhome, along with some small-scale office or commercial or institutional uses, such as a medical dental office, a restaurant, office or government admin, a bed and breakfast, et cetera. So all accessory uses within the O&I zoning district are permitted here according to the accessory use civic standards that are in our UDO sections 3.3.4 and 3.3.5. um i would like to highlight two additional conditions so we get condition six in your staff report um so the property is redeveloped on new construction first all parking is going to be located in the rear of the property um so maintaining that road frontage along east salisbury and there will be sidewalk connections located on the site to give safe pedestrian access as well as along the site's frontage all along j.a farrell The applicant has agreed to these conditions, but included a residential exemption clause for the two sidewalk connections. So if the property maintains and is not redeveloped and no new construction occurs, the sidewalk along J.A. Farrow would not be constructed. As soon as new construction comes in for non-residential use or redevelopment, that's when the sidewalk connection would be triggered. And so the planning board met on August 17 and unanimously recommended approval of this conditional zoning case with the addition of condition seven in your staff report, which is to say that if this property or this building on property were to be demolished, the town would meet a 90 day notice. And I believe that that's just for the historic preservation of the building that currently sits on the property. And and staff also recommend sure we will update this conditional zoning case Ms. Tenney couldn't be here but I included her presentation that she created for planning board and for BOC and I can answer any questions that you may have any questions I have one listen just regarding the sidewalk and I think I spoke to you earlier about it but I'm just a little confused on the sidewalk if the

Can we have a condition added that if the rezoning goes overnight and a law firm, dental office comes in there and does no remodeling or nothing, can we request request that that sidewalk sidewalk be added all the way down that street i think certainly judge miss it and say there's a non-residential change of use and the sidewalk would be triggered if that makes sense so if a lot i'm i'm saying there's no development yes okay so can we add that in okay okay yeah that's all right

for pedestrian um walking since the town owns the other part of that block yes if i'm making just a change of use if i think if any use were to purchase the property that's that can go in oh and i then they would have to put that sidewalk in unless it was residential right oh and i it will be sidewalk provided so with the zoning residential or i know when i use can go in there right so if an o and i use like a law office yeah let's buy it then they would need to put that sidewalk in before i think a ceo would be issued but if there were a residential use okay it continues as it is but that's with the change you just requested okay thanks thank you commissioner farrell so i'm curious um how how that is encoded or recorded

uh in documentation for memory's sake it could be 10 20 50 years from now that the use changes

Once this gets, if it gets approved, I believe we have files on track for every conditional zoning that gets approved. So we record it and we keep it. And if something were to happen and they would need a site plan, we would pull those conditions and look at them simultaneously with the site plan.

Thank you. And this has been on the market for a long time as residential. So we think also the transition to commercial works for that area and also for the resale property. So it's likely this change will help.

give this property along yeah yeah so the current condition says uh only triggered by the redevelopment of property for non-residential purposes or commencement of new commercial construction so is that not talking about just a change of use or i guess what does redevelopment mean in that way if it's not construction

I believe, you know, if they were to create a parking lot in the back. So it's kind of similar. And then I can add the change to use as well. So if it's a non-residential use that comes in, they'll need to add that as well.

I guess I'm just trying to see if we're good with what it is. If it were to be O&I, like they would need to add a parking lot or a concrete handicapped space or something like that, correct?

I would assume so. We can't require that anymore. We can't require, say, . But they would probably, I would assume, any business development that comes in would want to create parking spaces for their business.

So with the new house, Bill, you can't even, I mean, require handicap parking?

that's still um i believe that's still like above a local government's jurisdiction so it's a state requirement that ada parking spaces are provided um but beyond that we wouldn't be able to require five more spots that weren't ada i guess i'm just trying to see like if that if or maybe mr besic like if we're saying a transition from residential use to any type of on our use

Would that be considered this redevelopment, as it's currently said, if you were to add a...

I thought redevelopment was a broad enough term to cover that.

I think the intention is clear. I'll make sure we're covered with the language, but adding a parking spot, you know, paved ADA parking spot would be redevelopment covered. Yeah.

Well, the Department of Insurance would regulate that if it was a commercial use. You wouldn't be able to get insurance without complying with that. Once you've worked on the street, I guess. Do you think we're good as is? I did, yes. I do still. Good. Good to hear.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? One's Simon. That's not true. One person signed up for this public hearing. So Laura Beaver Hamrick, if you can come up. Please state your name and address.

Hi there. My name is Laura Beaver Hamrick, and I live at 11 Noe Street. I'm the co-owner and the permanent full-time resident of that house. And our house is the one that is closest to the east of the Hinton property. I love living in Pittsburgh. After frequently visiting my sister, who's a 35-year resident of the community, and then my mom, who lived here for a few years before she died, I was really excited to become a permanent resident here just a few years ago. And I really love being able to walk uptown and get to the restaurants and the shops and stuff. But what I love the most are my neighbors. My neighbors are incredible, and many of them are longtime residents of that area, and they have embraced those of us who are new to the community. We look out for each other, we stop and we talk to each other on the streets, and we roll each other's trash cans in on Wednesdays after the garbage truck comes. Now I attended the community meeting about this potential rezoning to learn more about what Pete and Deborah were requesting and I initially felt okay about it, because it didn't sound like a strip club was going to go into that property. So I felt okay about it, but I did express at that time my preference that it would remain residential. But recently when I returned home from vacation and saw the signs up for the public hearing, it really hit me then that, no, no, I want that to remain residential because I want new neighbors, people who live there, in the house and not just work there and so i talked to my closest neighbors the ones who live there on a full-time basis and they are in agreement we all want it to remain residential and so while some people might say that it's inevitable that this area will become commercial or institutional. Those of us who live there plan to stay there. In fact, I kind of hope I'm going to take my dying breath, not tomorrow or anything, but I hope I'll take my dying breath in that house on Noe Street. And while I want the Hinton's to be able to sell their house what we really want, what our close full-time neighbors want is to have new residential neighbors. And so I simply ask that as you make your decision, you put yourselves in our shoes and ask yourself, if you were a resident, Who would you want to be in that property? Would you want an owner who will live there and be part of this residential part of the neighborhood? Or would you want another business or institutional office who's going to turn out the lights and go home to some other place at night? so i just want to thank you for your consideration um and by the way as i told the people at the community gathering when we're talking about the town hall where we got to see some of the schematics i want to invite anybody to come over and sit on my back deck and enjoy the view i'll give you a drink and you can come meet the neighbors thank you um and thank you for what you do oh my gosh i cannot even believe the hours that y'all must put into gathering to all the stuff you have to do to be here to be informed and then to do this good work for our town so thank you i appreciate it thank you all right i'll take a motion to close the public hearing

So moved. Thank you, Commissioner Thurber. Second?

Second.

Commissioner Thurber, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any other discussion?

Well, Ms. Hamrick made a very compelling argument. No. Very compelling. And, um, I realized that I feel remiss about, uh, not having reached out to some folks that I know in this neighborhood. Um, and while staff also make a pretty compelling case, um, I'd really like to consider other options besides the motion to adopt tonight. What do other people think?

I might jump in. When I read through the packet, it said that there were no objections from the neighbors. And one of the things that kind of stood out for me is there's a sentence in there that nobody would want to live across from the town hall. And yet, I am so grateful that the town hall's driveway was curved so that lights won't go into uh julia kennedy's home because there is somebody who lives there but when i read this originally and and seeing from the public hearing that there were no objections from the neighbors he was it was very easy to be hey this is great it hasn't sold uh residential nobody has decided to move in there as as residential but hearing I mean, that, like you said, it was very compelling. And now I what was what was easy when I thought we had all the support of all the neighbors is now something that I'm it's given me pause.

Thank you. And I have a lot of thoughts about it because I think I hope Our town is evolving in a direction where we can have commercial uses, suitable commercial uses in proximity, close proximity to residential. I'd love to have a cafe in my neighborhood. I don't know that that's a viable business model in my neighborhood. That's a viable business for this particular site, but I just use that as an example for Uh, the way that I hope we see a greater diversity of, of uses in our, our neighborhoods. Um, so sounds like there's at least three of us are reluctant to make the motion to adopt the ordinance tonight. Um, do other commissioners want to speak up?

I'm going to speak up as a realtor.

Hmm.

And the realtor says, the little realtor in my head says, this property did not move. It was for sale for a long time. And the town of Pittsburgh will be changing. This is a microcosm of just that effect. And the angst that we as commissioners sometimes feel was just in this little presentation we had tonight. I just loved your presentation. But I also see a vision of Pittsburgh that generally has to move forward.

that house that house didn't sell as a residential and i think it would be for the best benefit of pittsburgh to to reassign it so that's that's my opinion i'll just say also you know miss mary made a very good point i have some property on that and the hintons have been there for 40 some years beat and his wife they have had a hard time selling it And thank you, John, for your comments. And I don't really see the O and I being a real issue in that neighborhood myself. My question is, how does the next door neighbor have an M1 zone? I mean, that just blew my mind when I read this, reading that.

What's an M1 zoning?

that could have been back to when the old railroad 1870s yeah so any other comments

I'd like to make a motion to adopt the ordinance for conditional zoning, case PB25370, the Hinton property. Second.

Motion and a second. Any other discussion? OK. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously. Thank you.

up next we have a public hearing on the unified development ordinance text amendment zta 2026 12 the downtown overlay district

Good evening, Mayor and members of the board. Theresa Thompson, Downtown Development Director. For those who may not know me as well in my current role, I've been fortunate to work with the town for six and a half years. And I wanted to give a little background of... Yes, sir.

If we can get a motion to open the public hearing.

So moved.

Thank you, Commissioner Hunziker. Second. Commissioner Kramer. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

So as the downtown director, I'm still housed within the development services department. Rather than primarily reviewing new development applications, my work is now focused more on preserving and strengthening our existing downtown community. while ensuring that new growth complements what already makes Pittsburgh special. That includes supporting existing businesses, strengthening downtown's core, planning for the expansion of downtown's physical footprint, understanding how new development and redevelopment will affect parking, traffic, connectivity, and the overall character and function of downtown Pittsburgh. And this is as Pittsburgh continues to grow. We're going to identify ways to mitigate potential negative impacts, advancing downtown economic vitality, and working collaboratively with businesses, property owners, residents, various town boards, and staff on short and long-range downtown initiatives. so another one of our goals is working with our three committees design promotions and economic vitality along with the downtown advisory board to become more involved early on in the process especially with major projects in the town center and downtown support areas such as conditional rezonings so we have several board and commit committee members here tonight um all of our amazing volunteers if you don't mind raising your hands the ones that were able to make it this long um some had to go home thank you all for coming in for your support i wanted to add that pittsburgh was currently an accredited north carolina main street community we began as an affiliated program in 2023 we became accredited our second year last year pittsburgh was the highest scoring accredited program in the whole state So I think we've done a great deal of work to reach this point. And this year is focused more on implementing many of the initiatives the downtown advisory board and committees have discussed for the past several years. I also wanted to thank the board for recognizing the importance of this work and funding the additional staff person, which hopefully will be on board soon. And that's gonna help us support downtown, give us greater capacity to help improve priorities that are already in motion. so our program follows a national recognized main street four-point approach organization promotion design and economic vitality so everything we do falls within one of these four uh approaches as shown in our annual work plan which is approved by the downtown advisory board and the town board so tonight's request this text amendment request implements our first economic vitality project that's in our approved uh downtown annual work plan and that is reviewing the unified development ordinance standards related to downtown. So phase one of this project focused mostly on the downtown overlay district, and this district was created in 2018, and it basically just includes a list of prohibited uses within that boundary area. So when the UDO was created a couple years ago. That language was just copied and pasted from the old zoning ordinance into the UDO. What we've been doing is as the downtown dream team, and we have a few members here of the dream team as well. There's two. Yes. Shannon Plummer is the chair of the dream team. So they've been meeting for about a year now. And of that, about nine months have been focused on different projects, but including the downtown overlay district. The dream team's feedback went to the economic vitality committee and then to the downtown advisory board known as PDAD. We also coordinated with town staff and met with the town attorney before bringing the amendment to the planning board and to you. So I just wanted to give a little background that tonight it's not just about one text amendment. It's about putting the framework in place for a broader effort to modernize downtown regulations. and improve coordination. Some of the other projects the Dream Team's working on that will be coming to the board includes the evaluation of mixed-use zoning incentives. wanted to mention that especially with the rezoning the conditional rezoning that went before you tonight that is located in the downtown support area some of the research that is being done is to include character districts similar to what apex has where it already identifies based on where the future land use plan designations are form-based code elements And that includes everything from sidewalk widths, which was included in the conversation tonight, street trees, outdoor seating, basically looking at the individual properties within the town center and downtown support areas on not just as one-by-one CZs or conditional rezonings. We're putting together a broader framework of these character districts that says, OK, if you're within this boundary, then we're going to be looking at um form-based code that's going to help fit the character better for downtown development in the future so um together these efforts will ensure that downtown is growing um and as we redevelop and expand the physical footprint we're comprehensively planning for the character functions and experiences that we want to have downtown So that's the why. And with the broader purpose in mind, I'll go through the specific amendments for tonight. And we can go to the staff report, please. Any questions on that? Sorry. I'm trying to make it quick because I know you're tired. okay so the first amendment is to reference the correct boundary uh not the pittsburgh program boundary that's basically where if you want a facade grant you would have to go you'd have to fall within the the main street program so we crossed that out and um identified it at the downtown overlay district which is specific to the prohibited use table Number two is adding the map to the UDO. We don't foresee it expanding based on the down zone restrictions. So this is just going to help clarify who's within the district, who's not. Thirdly, we are clarifying game rooms and electronic gaming operations. So as I explained when this was worded in 2018, Amy Nunez, Gamers do not have a definition, the dream team, along with the economic Vitality Committee and P DAB all agreed that certain types of recreation entertainment uses are appropriate downtown. Amy Nunez, Such as arcades billiards starts bowling alleys similar uses so removing that outdoor to outdated game room reference resolve that contradiction, while also making sure that electronic gaming operations and sweepstakes businesses are still prohibited. So clarifying that. Number four is looking at Tattoo Studios, which was by far the most extensively discussed part of this project. For reference or background, in 2023, an individual applicant requested permission to open a studio downtown. At the time, town staff was proposing a 300-foot separation between tattoo parlors, limiting it to just the second floor. The planning board at that time tabled their request and the applicant did not return. So tonight's proposal is different. Rather than responding to just one applicant, it was the result of more than nine months of research and community discussion and as part of the adopted downtown work plan. So the conversation became broader than simply asking whether we should have down tattoo parlors, became what standards would best preserve downtown's historic character while supporting entrepreneurship opportunities. So the Dream Team recognized that tattoo studios are increasingly considered small creative businesses, often complementing art districts and downtown environments. Most downtown districts in North Carolina already allow them by right. including in the historic downtown areas. So at the same time, there was also discussion through the process that there's a strong consensus that Pittsburgh's historic core should also be protected from new uses such as a tattoo parlor. So the different standards, which I can go through in more detail if you would like, are included for that purpose. think the biggest intent was that we're limiting the uh tattoo parlors to the outer portions and protecting that historic floor on hillsborough street so can you speak more about that protection and what it what it's doing protecting us from yes sir um so as i said most downtowns already allow them by right in even historic downtowns given that Pittsburgh is a small and growing town, the way that I've seen how new uses come to be in smaller towns is more of, allowing them in steps so if you go back about five years ago we did not allow bars or taverns downtown in downtown Pittsburgh so it went from not being permitted at all to them being a special use permit which is quasi-judicial it's a lot that's involved in it to then I presented it to the town board did a lot of research at the same you know just as tonight and explained that bars are allowed by right lots of different downtowns and it was still there's still some hesitation but going through that process it eventually went from being a special use permit to a permitted by right use so kind of using that as an example to where we are today with tattoo parlors um what i see a lot with small towns is you allow it in more of like incremental steps so after you know having it allowed in certain parts of downtown as time goes by there could be additional text amendments made to potentially allow them permitted by right in other parts of downtown that answers your question okay any more questions on tattoo what are

but as it stands with this language the hillsborough street section of downtown would not have uh tattoos uh bodyguard studios as an allowed use is that correct you label it as a protected spot protected is that the word we're using not in any official language all right

It's just more of a presentation of explaining that there was hesitation in having tattoo parlors in the historic core.

I do have to say I don't particularly care for subjecting them to separate rules as far as their signage and so on. The thousand feet between another one, I don't think we have tons of tattoo shops trying to open up in downtown. I just don't think that it's it's correct to have certain rules for some and certain rules for the other um i do i have no issue with um uh keeping them off of hillsborough street going basically from hillsborough street down sanford that main corridor i'm good with that but um i don't think we should hold them to different standards than any other business as far as the signage and um the 1,000 feet of another existing tattoo parlor.

So would you like to make a slight change to this?

I would. Can I do that now, or do we need to go after that?

Finish the presentation.

I'm almost done. Number five is updating several definitions, including electronic gaming operations, flea markets, pawn shops, and shooting galleries. Of course, they all remain prohibited uses, but we wanted to clarify what those uses are through the definitions. So overall, the proposed revisions improves consistency and clarity throughout the UDO. We think it'll help make staff-level decisions easier to interpret, provide clearer direction for the applicants and property owners. At its June 2nd meeting, the Downtown Advisory Board unanimously recommended approval of all amendments. The planning board also unanimously recommend approval of the amendments development service staff also recommends approval. So if you have any additional questions, please let me know. Otherwise we can discuss.

One last one, and I know that we can't make any changes at this time to the unapproved uses in there, but I would like to, at some time in the future, revisit the massage parlors, which is such an antiquated term for that. I would like to talk about allowing licensed massage and bodywork therapists to have businesses in there. Let me tell you from a small business, my business is chiropractic. i send somebody into chapel hill to cardinal massage at least once or twice a day and that could be business in pittsburgh so that would be in the future and this can be tied back into our work plan items and expanded on for sure thanks take a motion

Any other questions or comments? I have one just from clarification on the C2 on the Sanford Road. You and I spoke about that. Can you clarify to me again that this will be included in with the tattoo parlors or?

If it's currently zone C2 on Sanford, as the language is currently written in the staff report, there could potentially be a tattoo parlor on those properties.

Okay. You see where I'm pointing? To me, that's right at the... Near the fire department?

Page 7. Block at the bottom.

Yes. Mr. Farrell, you're talking about near the fire department? Yes. It actually would be right near the ice cream plant there, I believe. Is that not correct?

Yeah.

That goes on to there.

However, if we keep that corridor buffer going down Sanford Road, then that excludes that.

Correct.

Well, we'd have to change the language to extend that corridor, though. Yeah.

But that would be the 200 foot. OK. Yes, sir. Sorry.

We've removed the additional conditions already in the staff report, such as the signage requirements, visibility requirements, and replaced that with a 200 foot buffer on Hillsboro and Sanford Road that will take care of that issue.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, If that block is about 300 feet wide so if it's there's a 200 foot. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Restriction then it's not gonna be able to be there. TAB, Mark McIntyre, And just clarify that thank you. Don't want to sign up for the public hearing. So I'll take a motion to close the public hearing. So thank you, Commissioner Hunsaker.

Second, second, third.

All those in favor say aye.

So I will get the correct language here. Make a motion to adopt the ordinance amending the town of Pittsburgh Unified Development Ordinance CTA 2026 dash 12 with The changes of removing, keep number one, remove two, three, four, and five from the tattoo restrictions, which is basically remove existing use restrictions on tattoo and body art establishments while maintaining a 200 foot distance between other similar establishments, a 200 foot buffer restriction along Hillsborough Street and down Sanford Road corridors. You can clarify right away line, the right away line, sorry.

I'm sorry? The right-of-way lines from Hillsborough Street and Sanford.

OK. As a measuring distance. All right. Then the right-of-way lines from Hillsborough Street down to Sanford. Makes sense.

I'll second that motion. OK. Motion and a second. Any discussion?

I just have one discussion. And this is directed toward the back of the room where the volunteers that have been doing the work As a whole, we have heard from the EDC of Chatham County. And then we talked a little bit about the chamber. And then we went into NC IDEA and Scale Chatham. And I want the public to understand that we as a board are outwardly facing proactive when it comes to business. and I recognize that I and I honor my fellow commissioners and especially the staff and their efforts so far so there's a great big huge spectrum that we come tonight and I want everybody to acknowledge that so here good work well said and and I'll emphasize it's not just about big business but also small businesses and creative business any other questions or comments

all right all those in favor say aye aye any opposed all right thank you and huge thanks to staff for all the work on this and to the many volunteers and the many many many hours that went into this effort thank you thank you thank you up next we have a request for economic development strategic planning and coordination um well tonight town manager jonathan franklin and i

are um presenting three coordinated economic development initiatives that will help pittsburgh plan intentionally for growth and investment the first is the economic development strategic plan the town's first comprehensive downtown master plan with the parking study update and a potential partnership with nc idea through scale chatham Each initiative has a distinctive purpose. Together they give the town an opportunity to strengthen an overall economy, position downtown to prosper as Pittsburgh grows, and build a stronger environment for entrepreneurs and small businesses. So the first item is the economic development strategic plan, which will establish a town-wide framework for at least the next five years. It will identify priorities and strategies to support Pittsburgh's economic growth, competitiveness, and long-term prosperity. The planning process will combine economic and demographic research and stakeholder input and will address business recruitment, retention, and expansion. I'm looking to put the memo up so you can read along. Small business and entrepreneurship, target industries and employment opportunities, workforce and talent development, development opportunities and organizational capacity and partnerships. The town has executed an engagement agreement with the creative economic development consulting and that agreement and scope of work are attached to the memo in the packet. Number two is the Downtown Master Plan and Parking Study Update. For the past three years, the Downtown Advisory Board has identified updating downtown Pittsburgh's long-range vision as one of its highest priorities. That objective has appeared in every annual work plan we've had, starting with fiscal year 2024, continuing to this fiscal year. As the work has progressed, it's clear that downtown needs a comprehensive plan that brings the many pieces affecting its future into one coordinated document. The master plan will address previous planning efforts, community input, adopted town plans, land use and redevelopment, parking and mobility, streetscape and connectivity, public spaces, infrastructure, historic preservation, arts, culture, and tourism. housing economic development and implementation and funding. The result will be a clear vision implementation framework for at least the next 10 years. It will establish near and long-term priorities, responsible parties, potential funding sources and performance measures. So to clarify this plan, neither plan are intended to be plans that just sit on a shelf. The downtown master plan will become a roadmap for our annual downtown work plan, in addition to the economic development strategic plan. So every year when we prioritize major projects to focus our resources on each project for the fiscal year, we'll have this guiding document for the major project for the next 10 years. So rather than starting from scratch each year, we'll have a coordinated long-term strategy that'll help guide our work. And I also wanted to thank the board for considering this budget amendment. to this current fiscal year. And having a consultant lead this effort, that'll allow me more time to focus on additional projects in the work plan, not so heavy on having to handle drafting this plan in-house, which probably would have taken over a year once we could actually start. And this is going to bring it down to a six-month process. So thank you again for that recommendation, consideration. Both plans are expected to occur concurrently. And there will be a lot of different overlap and coordination between the two. The master plan will translate relevant economic goals into recommendations. And the strongest overlap is going to be the market analysis. business and property owner engagement, small business support, business recruitment and retention, redevelopment opportunities, tourism, and public investment. So the two plans can occur to help coordinate community and business surveys, share economic and market research, and use the same stakeholder findings where appropriate. The third item is Scale Chatham and NCIDEA. So this is a potential partnership, which you saw the presentation earlier tonight. It's focused on strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Pittsboro, Siler City, and Chatham County as a whole. NCIDEA is already opening their next page. NCID has already invested approximately $200,000 in Pittsburgh-based pilot programming. The proposed next phase would build upon that work through expanded entrepreneur support, accelerator programming, regional coordination, and technology-based economic development initiatives. So our goal is a county-wide collaborative approach. It connects resources, expands opportunities, and creates a stronger environment for entrepreneurs and smaller businesses. to start growing grow and succeed so staff mainly town manager jonathan has begun meeting with the local economic development partners including cccc small business center and web squared these conversations are helping us understand existing programs so that our efforts can complement and build upon what's already underway and these initial discussions have been positive and support a coordinated approach towards all these shared goals So are there any questions on the three economic development plans? I know everybody's being tired. I'm sorry.

Any questions for Theresa?

I have one question for you. This is great work, and we need it. I'd like to be in the loop. I'd like to be in some of the meetings and making sure that this, to me, is policy. I want to understand where we're headed with it, making sure that the commissioners understand that this can be monitored successfully and graded, because we're spending money on this. We need to know it's productive. I want to be, as a member of the EDC Chatham County, I'd like to be a part of this economic drive as well. So I'd like a copy of the meeting's dates and times, so I can't attend right now.

Sir? For both. Again? For both the master plan and the economic development. Please. because one the first step in this and i was hoping we could schedule it for the special meeting that we may call in two weeks to discuss some of these other items is that we go ahead and have our kickoff for the strategic plan where our consultant can uh start diving in with you all to figure out what your vision is for future we can we can tie it in with the chamber this will just just be y'all We, the consultant, and you all in that conversation. We'll be input throughout the process, but we'll kick off.

There's two motions with this request. The first one is to motion authorized staff to develop proposed steering committees to then bring to you in October for both plans. And the Downtown Advisory Board has already looked at potential committee members for the Downtown Master Plan. And the second is to authorize the town manager to execute agreements to facilitate scale chattel.

I'll make the motion to authorize staff to develop proposed steering committee for the economic development strategic plan and the downtown master plan for consideration by the board of commissioners at its October meeting.

Thank you.

Is there a second?

I second.

Thank you, Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor?

Hang on. I have a question. Discussion, yeah. Discussion, thanks. So the motion to authorize and develop a steering committee, what are your goals? What are your priorities when you're trying to select somebody?

What's our intention there? What is it that? For the strategic plan, it's looking at the different industry experts within Chatham County. someone that has some ties to the edc obviously someone with downtown um we've got someone from medical someone from the community college so it's it's kind of picking individuals uh another county we already selected them or i've got a draft list yes sir yeah we'd love to see that's it any other discussion

all those in favor say aye aye aye and i'll take a motion to authorize the town manager to execute agreements to facilitate scale chatham in partnership with ncidea and surrounding communities so moved thank you commissioner bonnets second second commissioner hunziker all those any discussions all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed all right and now we have a budget amendment for those things so i'll take a motion to adopt the budget ordinance amending the fiscal year 2627 budget to allocate funds to execute a downtown master plan and parking study thank you commissioner thurber second second commissioner farrell all those in favor say aye aye opposed All right, now we're to the downtown work plan update.

For the downtown volunteers, this is the last item.

We can go downtown to all the . Oh, yes.

so tonight i'm asking you to approve an update to the downtown annual work plan that adds three projects recommended unanimously by the downtown advisory board also known as pdab um these projects grew from pdab's first annual strategic board retreat which happened on june 23rd Several of you were able to make it. So parking, mobility, and access were identified as immediate priorities for focused attention. PDAB then unanimously recommended the work plan update by a 9 to 0 vote on July the 7th. The requested action establishes a framework for PDAB and staff to organize the work, evaluate options, coordinate with the upcoming downtown master plan and parking study yay thank you and bring informed recommendations back to the town board uh so first out of the three is parking um the 2024 or November 2024 downtown parking study identified structured parking opportunities for further evaluation um Per the parking study, if downtown continues to grow and thrive, additional public parking will likely be needed. Potential locations should be identified and preserved before limiting downtown land or before limited downtown land is committed to other uses. downtown advisory board has been discussing parking needs for several years the 2022 advisory board survey identified public parking and wayfinding signage among the features downtown needs more of our community vision forum in november of 2022 which attended by approximately 100 people uh free parking was identified as a strength while parking parking visibility directional signage sidewalks traffic and walkability repeatedly appeared among downtown's weaknesses In our 2023 community survey with 353 responses from the community, residents asked for easily accessible parking, more parking, a parking structure, wider and improved sidewalks, rerouting of large trucks, greater walkability, and more retail and shopping opportunities. So those are community input processes we've gone through over the past several years. The 2024 parking study counted approximately 1,345 spaces at the time, and applying industry standards to existing downtown uses, the parking study indicated an estimated need of 1,926 spaces to 2,057 spaces. So obviously what we have is a bit less than that. So the parking study found that current supply uh generally generally meets our needs today um the reason is because parking demand for downtown uses peak during different times so approximately 200 000 square feet of government office space creates weekday demand that drops during evenings and weekends that's when restaurants events and entertainment Maybe it's busiest. So much of that is county government, while all of it is county government activity. Those offices are expected to relocate in the next five to 10 years. So that being said, the parking study is saying that as of right now, parking spaces are being used at different times of the day and different days of the week. So as government office patterns change and downtown hopefully continues to add more retail, restaurants, housing, more events and tourism, the timing and volume of parking demand is expected to change as well. The study recommends monitoring the system, identifying new opportunities and considering locations for future structures before major redevelopment occurs downtown. so looking at the the bullet list um parking public parking is essential it is a land use but in a traditional downtown it is more than just a use um it's as you would just typically see on like a site plan it functions as essentially shared infrastructure supporting the district as a whole same as you would see like public water and sewer historic downtown buildings generally sit at or near the property line basically zero zero lot lines And physically cannot provide the suburban style parking that you would see on individual lots that could have individual parking lots. So downtown also serves as a broader role than just a commercial shopping center. It's the center for business, civic life, events, culture, tourism, and community activity for the whole town. The shared infrastructure supports business survival, private investment, civic activity, tourism, and the town's ability to compete with newer commercial centers that are currently being built and plan to be built in and around town. And these planned unit developments have parking, which is already being planned and incorporated in with those developments, whereas the historic downtown does not have that option. Second bullet is downtown land is finite. So once a centrally located property is sold or developed or committed to another use, it may no longer be available for public parking or any other downtown wide need. Per the parking study, clearly identified accessible parking within a three-minute walk helps downtown compete for customers with these new commercial centers. The parking study used a one to three minute walking distance because that's the practical area for serving shops, restaurants, and civic destinations. Within that distance, downtown only has a few realistic options. So basically the parking study is saying you have to have accessible parking within about a three minute walk for things such as retail, restaurants. Otherwise, customers are just gonna go elsewhere where they are gonna be able to find parking easily. So the few options that the parking study identifies, one is the town owned municipal lot on West Salisbury Street. The parking study describes this property as the ideal location and size for structured parking. It inventories currently 55 standard spaces and four accessible spaces.

So right at 60 spaces and estimates that a multi-level structure could accommodate approximately 500 to 700 vehicles, depending on design.

So of course this has not been designed. That was just an estimate.

The second location identified is the alleyway behind the Hillsborough Street businesses connecting West Street and Salisbury Street.

So if you think of like the alleyway back there, some of those properties could theoretically be combined and create a parking structure.

The third is the county annex area just southeast of the historic

uh courthouse and traffic circle the parking study calls this an ideal location for a public private structured parking facility serving both redevelopment and future downtown demand the broader county administrative area currently contains more than 300 public parking spaces The municipal lot and the county annex lots together account for 283 public spaces within the study's one to three minute analysis. So that concentration is one of the reasons these properties matter so much to downtown's future. Two additional sites identified by the study. Those two lots owned by the county for tax and water payments close to Rectory Street. Those are physically large enough to hold the parking structure, but not close enough to the activity to have a meaningful impact for parking. And then lastly are several lots, three lots located on the corner of Fayetteville Street and West Street. Those were identified in 2024. They have since been sold. so that doesn't mean that we know what their future is but they're no longer at least a public option for the town to potentially be able to utilize for parking so um you know as these sites change as properties are sold our choice choices narrow more and more um parking supports economic growth planning for future public parking capacity supports downtown's continued economic success success more restaurants retail anytime entertainment cultural destinations and events visitation and parking demands are expected to grow um for those that live in pittsburgh and you're aware of where the private parking lots are side street parking um that seems to suffice if you're a newer visitor you don't even know where any of the public parking is let alone side streets or private parking lots and which ones you're allowed to be in and not um so if customers and in particular new visitors to downtown, perceive downtown as difficult or uncertain, they have other choices to shop elsewhere in town. If investors believe Pittsburgh lacks this critical infrastructure, business and developers considering meaningful investments downtown may scale back or choose other locations. So protecting public parking capacity is therefore part of protecting downtown's economic future. The Board of Commissioners approved a resolution when you established PDAB, and that called for early opportunities for PDAB to review and provide input on plans, projects, and decisions affecting downtown before the Board of Commissioners makes decisions that would impact the downtown and support areas. So adding this project to the work plan now provides that responsibility for PDAB to put this into practice so as the town begins the downtown master plan the parking study update the hillsborough street streetscape um construction and discussions about public properties redevelopment and let's see oh i did want to mention there's a few other downtowns in the area for comparisons um looking at carrboro for example Carboro directs visitors to 11 public parking lots, including two parking decks. Chapel Hill lists nine public parking lots, including three parking decks. Hillsboro has two surface parking lots and one parking deck. We recently visited downtown Apex. and saw that they expanded their Saunders public parking lot from 240 spaces to approximately 393 spaces before their Salem streetscape project. And so what they did with their Salem streetscape project was they removed 20 on-street spaces to that parking lot and retain 10 of their parallel spaces in like key locations so um wanted to bring that back to what pdab's discussions have been over several years in that um there could be a possibility in the future to relocate many of those angled parking spaces on hillsborough street um decrease the number there so that you could have wider sidewalks similar to apex um where apex's sidewalks are going to be around 15 to 20 feet wide and uh also having the opportunity to expand parking downtown um so that one day you could have wider sidewalks and retain several different of the parallel parking so you know going maybe from 65 spaces to 25 spaces In the parking study, they give different examples of how you can have funding opportunities. So, for Concord was one of the examples. And its downtown master plan coordinated the city, the county, and private redevelopment interests around structured parking. So, you know, Pittsburgh can use these public-private approaches in our research and looking at potential finance opportunities. and operating facility for a defined period.

So I appreciate all the research into this. The request tonight is to add these three items to the work plan for PDAB to go back and work on, correct?

Correct. Any questions on public parking?

Do we have any inquiries about grants for grant assistance for parking? Is there such a thing?

evaluation we'll come back to you with that information like free money that would be interesting i've never heard of it before and as far as the streetscape goes um if we're if we're making the sidewalk smaller during the streetscape i mean at what point will we be able to make them larger are we making them smaller where there's

So where the steps are in front of the Vino locations, they are getting smaller, more narrow there. And then I think on the north side, or excuse me, the east side, approximately where Burley's is all the way down, they're adding steps. So it is becoming more narrow there. And I want to say in another location, they're having to add more steps because basically the existing steps don't meet requirements. And so they have to be a lot bigger and longer than they currently are. So there are several locations where it is going to be more narrow.

So what is the date on the start of the streetscape?

Tentatively, we're looking at May of 2027. But we also ask that in the conditions for the contractor that they cannot do any construction between October 1st and January 1st. So that means they need to start in time to have one site finish by October 1st. And there are some delays. So realistically, if it keeps getting pushed back, there might not even be a start date until January of 2028. Because we don't want them to run out of time, basically, in the construction zone during our peak.

What's the economic impact for the streetscape? Can we predict that loss of business?

Yeah.

It will be significant.

Yes.

And is that something the board should be considering?

Well, the work that has to be done on the streetscape, like the underground work,

That's infrastructure improvements that I understand, but compensation or ways we can mitigate some of the loss.

The town board did approve a line item to address how we can assist businesses more than $5,000. And so we have our downtown streetscape team or downtown streetscape starters is the team. Part of that team was able to go to Apex with us, and that's part of what we're going to be working with them on.

Do you know if any of this construction will be done at night?

We are working with them. The original conversation was a lot of it was supposed to be done at night, and now we're continuing conversations on trying to make sure as much as possible could be done at night. So the original conversations we had was over the past two years to about seven, eight months ago. And now that we're trying to make sure everything kind of is staying on track with the timeline, we'll be able to shore up a lot more of the details when we get a better idea of what the timeline is going to be.

um so moving on to mobility if are there any other questions about the three items that teresa is trying to add to organization under the work plan i think he's trying to rush me any questions for theresa these are three good options so yeah mobility which is the heavy truck traffic downtown

and uh installing the wayfinding signage for public parking which is it's on the work plan already but specifically getting this done before the streetscape construction starts because that's only going to be even more pressing that's probably the most pressing out of all three of these any questions or comments

take a motion to approve the update to the downtown annual work plan to add the parking mobility and access projects as recommended by the pittsburgh downtown advisory board moved thank you commissioner bonnets second second commissioner hunziker all those in favor say aye hi i'm listening to you we love you guys all right up next parks and rec advisory board resolution we've made a couple of updates and just moved some things around we worked on the wording to

put a little twist on it to make it a little bit lighter. So let me know if you have any questions.

We had the sort of 30-day comment period. Did we get any comments?

We had one.

One comment. We addressed it.

Yes.

The comment was looks good. Right. Or looks good. There were other comments prior. Yep. But just the one comment . Yeah.

Thank you. So the parent policy is greatly improved. And it's got much better tone. And the feeling conveyed when one reads these languages is much better, really a great improvement. And it's very clear that efforts were made to address concerns of the board and other readers. And I'm very grateful for those efforts. There are three things missing. And I would suggest the following amendments. They have to do with the planning board and budget and staff roles. So I'll go ahead and read those off. Number one, I think that the language should be changed to add somewhere. Commissioner Hunsaker suggested section five, subsection D. Parab shall advise the planning board on matters pertaining to recreational planning, including parks, greenways, trails, open space, recreation facilities, development-related recreational impacts.

What section was your answer?

The suggestion was to put it in Section 5D. It's less important to me where it goes. then that we recover this piece that is in our current ordinance which is that the parks and rec advisory board does work with the planning board directly that that um para michelle advised the planning board on matters pertaining to parks and rec planning is that in writing or are you recommending it's in the ordinance excuse me it's in the ordinance today

so it's currently it's been in the ordinance but yeah since 2003. yeah okay but uh well i guess my question is is that how is that done is it in writing or is it in uh meetings the extra meetings or how are they advising well i mean i think in general advisory boards are to the meant to advise the board of commissioners and so we have multiple i understand how it's written in the ordinance now. But I mean, we have multiple advisory boards that advise the Board of Commissioners. And from a timeline perspective, a lot of councils come together at the Board of Commissioners. So I think it's a unique step if we were to have an advisory board advise an advisory board.

It's in our ordinance. And it's been in our ordinance since 2003. and the advantage of the being i think we're going to be growing very very rapidly as a town our planning board is working extra extra hard our parks and rec advisory board needs to also be working very very hard because staff are working super hard on a lot of new park acquisitions we're growing our parks faster than

but what is the advantage of them talking i mean won't the staff receive what the recommendations and then bring it to the planning board already and say does this make sense to you guys is that is that i think i think there's there's something different to be gained with having the advisory boards communicate directly

Would that come through Katie? If it needs to come through Katie, it would be presenting anyway, right?

But I think it needs to be explicit. It's been and it needs to be.

Paul, can you work on the advisory board? advising an advisory board? Or, I mean, it's currently in our ordinance, I believe, but Commissioner Bonham's suggestion, I think you're out of the room, was that the PARIB advises the planning board directly?

Why? If that's what you all want to allow them to do, sure. But ordinarily, the advisory boards advise you.

I think the question is, how would they advise the planning board? Because I would think that the parent would tell you in your discussions, and then Katie would bring it to the planning board when something is being presented. But how would you? Because that's your question, right? How are they going to do that?

How is it always? It's never been. It might be in the ordinance, but I don't think that's how we're operating right now. And then the person who directs the department advises us. The planning department advises us. So maybe we need to change, unless there is something special that I'm missing. You said it's been 2003. Has there been communications between advisory boards? Does the planning board talk to the downtown?

In the past, indeed. Yes. In the past. That's what I was informed when I interviewed probably nine different people prior pair of members members and they they were talking to planning board members yeah now granted we were much smaller town we had uh smaller staff or at times didn't have any parks and rec staff but uh i think that the fact that we're going to be growing so very rapidly i'd like the two advisory boards to be communicating i think it just makes sense

the job of an advisory board is not to advise advisory board their responsibility is to advise us so why are we complicating this it's not complicating it's reserve i understand they're serving the existing ordinance it makes absolutely no sense to me so explain it to me so that

And what two advisory boards are we speaking of now? I thought we were on parks and rec advisory board.

Yeah, and now the recommendation is that the parks and rec advises the planning board.

I don't know if that's ever happened in my tenure.

Could be a coordination timeline issue. because then explain that well because if you have you would then have to make sure that a pair of board meeting was set up before the planning board meeting so that way then they could provide some type of input i think typically that's being done with katie now that if right where i was in creek when they were offering the 75 acres to work through the staff with that though is that what you're saying that the staff is too overworked so that

They don't provide that here's the planning. Here's the parks and rec there's planning board. They're doing their, their things. And I know there's probably some overlap, but, but that's where the staff comes in and says, um, here's a tweak.

So staff shrink the number of pair of meetings last year. Um, and three years ago, two years ago, maybe. Okay. And I think there are times when the advisory boards need to be in communication.

Formally. Structurally.

Structurally. Perhaps the chairs of those two boards.

So describe it. How does it work? Do you instruct the chair of the advisory board A to report to the chair of the advisory board B on a monthly basis? Or is it informal? Or is it in writing? Do they have their own joint meetings?

I am reluctant to be prescriptive. But my concern is that I think there have been times in the past when matters before Actually, they weren't even brought to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board. And that's part of the problem. You say they? Matters pertaining to Parks and Rec.

That were originated in the planning board or wherever? Certainly had overlap with planning board. Yes. Okay. So I'm trying to be helpful and pragmatic. I really want to work through this because I honor your opinions. Um, I'm just not seeing it. Uh, I would think the structure should be each advisory board by definition reports to us. And if we, as we, as commissioners have need clarification, we can go to the advisory board for the parks department or, or the planning part. I think that's on us and not them communicating because they don't have any guidance. They go out, they don't go crossroads, in my opinion, respectfully.

to a lot of this effort that we've been this resolution is that what was put in the the ordinance in 2003 doesn't fit how the town works in 2026 and so it's not it's not meant to just translate it forgive me i'm going to interrupt you you've said this before you've you've tried to convince me of this before my concern is that the parks and rec advisory board i have been hearing for years is not working well

and there is an attempt to change the policy and i don't think the problem is in the policy okay well i don't know what i was going to continue saying before you interrupted me so maybe the board should remove their board members and remove their members i don't think the problem is the members of the board

I think that's a discussion we can have. Yeah, thank you. I don't think that's a discussion we can talk about here. You're implying a personnel issue, correct?

Number two, staff shall provide PARIB an annual opportunity to review parks and rec budget priorities before the manager's recommended budget is finalized. I think that one's really important.

Did you skip over the first one?

Well, we've discussed it. Why did this not get sent? It's been put in writing, Commissioner Farrell. It's been in writing repeatedly.

Our manager said we got one response back.

It's been put in writing repeatedly. I disagree. We specifically made an action as a board at the last meeting two minutes ago to have 30 days to send comments. Did you send comments?

I regret that I didn't repeat it during that 30-day period, but twice before I had sent it in.

On the budget piece, Mr. Bonson spoke earlier today, we'd be happy to add another date to our budget kind of calendar. And that first day prior to your scoping meeting would be an advisory board scoping group. So then each staff member that's working with an advisory board would have that same type of budget scoping meeting with the advisory boards. And that way, then you're hearing directly from the advisory board what they're looking for budget-wise.

Nice solution. with that language suppose it didn't budget our staff's issues main job i think it's i mean i think it's important to hear from the advisory boards like hey what what are you thinking yes yeah so this is just another bottom line it's the budget budget for our staff just

responsibility it's the bottom line it's staff's responsibility this is an advisory board at the end of the day it's my responsibility I delegate mostly to the other boards have advised have had input right yes I think in previous years they have I think this past year I told all the department heads, there was no extra money. We're doing the baseline budget just so we know what that baseline budget is. And I think in a couple areas that was skipped.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt the Arab resolution as is.

I have a motion. Is there a second?

have a motion is there a second i'll second all right we have a motion and a second motion by commissioner farrell second by commissioner foley the discussion yeah this early discussion was interrupted so he did say that there were three things that he wanted to bring up he mentioned thank you i think we should hear out the third one before let's try to that's all stepping on your toes so what's the third one so

throughout all the different drafts of this policy we're asking a lot of parks and rec advisory board members those requests and requirements and restrictions have been softened tremendously however there is still a lot being asked of volunteers and these are volunteers no compensation I think that it's important that there be something in this document that indicates what staff's duties and roles are. And perhaps that is a section suggesting timely agendas and materials, referral of relevant planning matters, transmission of PARAB recommendations to this board, And when there's disagreement staff recommendations where they are not following, uh, the pair of, uh, decisions recommendations. Oh, additionally support for public engagement. I think that's, that's one thing that I've been hearing a lot. And, um, I think it's really important that, uh, our parks and rec advisory board be engaged with the public. So that's been deleted. That's in our ordinance.

When you say required or encouraged participation, because this is a volunteer thing, so.

I'm not saying required. I think that. Encouraged. Encouraged and facilitated, not discouraged.

So you want to add that?

I think as a board, we have to be very careful about directing staff.

It's a managerial responsibility. And you deal with a manager separate from dealing with advisory boards.

I can just interject at the last third meeting. I believe that there, Carrie and Katie, you can correct me if I'm wrong, the volunteers were kind of assigned perks, asked to go out and do more interaction with community to, and please, Correct me, but were instructed to have more Community engagement, and I think that was a really good really good step, and I remember that. They all seem very excited got up and put their names on the boards that they wanted to do so, I think we have a board that wants to engage whether it's it's.

uh mandate or whatever but i do want to just mention that that seems like that base in in your third point has been embraced and covered in that and in paris it's good to hear okay so jonathan you were there so for that the problem i mean i agree i think they can just do it and be excited about it but the policy does say community ambassadors individual members and the board as a whole are encouraged to serve as ambassadors for pittsburgh parks and recreation

Ambassador is, I think, the definition clearly states.

Is there any other discussion? Questions?

Well, there's a motion that was made and seconded, unless you're withdrawing your second. Second. So I would encourage commissioners to vote down that motion, and then we'll consider these other amendments. OK. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. So I'm voting to shoot down those recommendations.

I'm here to vote for Jay's amendment.

I'm going to vote no to the movement, but I want those amendments added. So, no.

I'm a nay. All right. Let's go around the table. All those in favor of the Paris resolution as it is, say aye. Aye. Nay. State your vote. Sorry.

Nay. Nay.

Nay.

Okay.

The motion fails. Thank you.

Now, can we make the motion to... we're just seeing comments back in again i thought we were going to make a motion to approve it with the amendments can you do that anybody can i'd like to make a motion to approve the pair of resolution with the amendments a second all right so there's a motion and a second

Do we know exactly what we're amending?

I don't think so. And I think that we would have to go back for legal advice to put in something about directing staff. I don't know what we do at this point. We've had this so many times. I don't know how to get to the point that we we can pass this but maybe commissioner bonds if you sit with mr messick and write out your suggestions my suggestions are written out right now i'll email them immediately and they're reiterations of what i've written before i don't believe the clerk has those amendments

Yeah, the other point too is if some of this isn't crystal clear and then there's an attempt to put language in here directing staff to do things, that's a problem. Because then it's going to be six or seven people's interpretation of what that means. Can you give me an example? Sure. Yeah, give me an example. You're a JAL-advised planning board, okay? What does that mean? How does that function? Then all of a sudden there's a potential personnel discussion about that. Right. Or then the board would be potentially aiming at a personnel decision about someone that I, whether a staff member that I'm supposed to supervise. I don't know how that works. And I would say adamantly that you should not be putting something directing staff to do anything in a resolution that is really directed at PARA. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I get some of your frustrations, but we are working very hard to try to do better with respect to how we approach these advisory boards. And quite frankly, we're doing a great job at almost everything that we're doing, and it just seems constant. With this one. different things planning with the uh parks and rec and i mean even the last pair of meeting you hadn't all the pair of members that were they were enthusiastic about robeson creek park and that didn't seem to matter so i'm just i'm getting a little confused on what staff are supposed to be doing these days

and can i withdraw my motion and then make a motion to approve the pair of resolution with the amendment that how was it phrased for budget um for uh para to um budget scoping do budget scoping prior to

prior to the uh budget meeting if i can make a suggestion about that i and then we just i understand what you're trying to do and i agree with that concept i think we should make that policy change for advisory boards in general as a whole um so if we're going to do it for one i think we should do it for others so you can either do it include it tonight and then go clean up the others later or we can like bring that policy back after some some staff reviews it might be better to have that as a part of the budget policy not the parent policy that's my suggestion like i don't i agree with that concept i think it could be valuable but i think it would be more better broadly applied to the advisory committees than to this like that would just what message says it enshrined in this resolution specifically we've also got an advisory board policy that's in draft as well that should be coming to you hopefully october november so we can add that to it if that's something that we can take care of these amendments in the advisory policy that goes for all boards at least the budget one yes

John Potter, But I still have issue putting. John Potter, Language. John Potter, After actually that lead to. John Potter, Some type of that's going to be trouble.

I agree.

Quinn Fowler, I should.

Quinn Fowler, Make a motion again.

John Potter, You want to. we're seeing my motion no remake we voted that got voted down but you could remake the same motion and then we could re-vote hold on no i'm not making a motion i'm sorry i don't agree with any of it no it's your emotion first agreement motion you made to make a motion to uh yeah let me see So I'll take a motion to adopt the pair of resolutions. So moved. Thank you. Foli, second. Any other discussion? All right. Let's go around the table again. Mr. Farrell? Yay. Yay. Yay. Yay. Yay. Yay. Nay. All right. Motion passes. Thank you. Up next, we have appointments to Parib. There are submitted applications. We could do them one at a time or three at a time.

Is your Parib just went from seven to nine? got some extra people to pick what happened when you passed the pair resolution just now your pair board went from seven to nine members so that's the two so now there's three appointments available they can cut the credits and three members may reside in the all three so yes and three may reside in the etj three of them so you'd have six in town three in etj May, but they don't have to, but they can. Yeah, that was to give you all more flexibility on applications.

So I'd like to make a motion to appoint David Allen, Anastasia Woody, and Phillip Daniels to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board for terms ending June 30th, 2028. I second.

OK, motion and second. One question, should the new ones be staggered?

No.

So there's an open position that expired June 30th. But. You'd be okay because you just created two more positions? It is all in Ed. Yeah, that would be okay. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion? You repeat those names, I'm sorry.

Yeah, Dave Allen, Anastasia Woody, and Phillip Daniels.

Phillip Daniels is in the ETJ?

He's in the ETJ.

David Allen, who do I have?

Anastasia Woody.

Those are two in-town applicants.

I nominate Chad Morgan.

I did speak with Katie earlier today about utilizing Paul Quadros and Chad Morgan and Travis Scott and a few other people who she volunteered as a I don't think we could come up with a name. It should be a committee or a panel for athletic fields because of Chad Morgan and Paul Quadras' and Travis Scott's soccer experience, especially with the fields that we are putting forth.

Is that one of your names?

Chad, Travis Scott, and Paul Quadros on an athletic advisory. That's what you're looking for anyway, right?

Yeah, committee.

Yeah, or panel or advisory.

the motion is for three names but we don't have to do them three at a time either well the motion has been made the motion's been seconded yes and three positions they have three names they're three positions call the question okay um Motion and a second for all three names. Can you repeat them, please?

Dave Allen, Anastasia Woody, and Phillip Daniels.

Now, I'm sorry, but it's me again. Phillip Daniels in ATJ. Thought we needed three inside that.

No, it may include up to... so up to three in the etj so he's one in the etj and the other two are in town but again um morgan quadros and travis i think would be fantastic on that so it's not like he doesn't need to that's cool okay you're talking about something creating a separate advisory yeah panel

The motion was for those three names. The question has been called. So all those in favor, say aye.

Are we done with the discussion?

Call the question. If the question is called. Rich rules is that when someone says call the question, then the question is posed. We vote.

OK. Go ahead. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. All right, we got five items on the agenda. First one is the budget amendment for the Public Works building. Commissioner Hanziker? You requested this.

I requested this on behalf of Commissioner Hunziker. Thank you very much for making that request. Apologies for my tardiness in getting to the meeting. Very briefly, I just wanted to have a conversation about this because municipalities nearby are actively electrifying their outdoor power equipment. I gathered that this seems to be an outdoor power equipment shed.

It's going to be, let's see here, 50 by 100 feet, 14 feet ceilings with a concrete pad that's included in the bid or the estimate that we received for building itself. That's $160,000. And then we've got 40 for wiring, plumbing, and HVAC. And part of that will be a personnel office, and then we'll move parking rec in there, hopefully in the short term, and then have a couple of days for new equipment. But there will be equipment base? Yes.

Mainly for large trucks. Oh, large trucks. Okay. Well, the mention of Parks and Rec made me think that there would be some mowers or something going in here. I just want to encourage anytime we're building new parks, excuse me, any new public works facilities or Parks and Rec facilities, we think carefully about the electrical. as regards the need to save money by doing what other municipalities are doing. It's electrifying outdoor power equipment.

Yeah, and we've done that. The building that we just renovated, it has a closet specifically for battery charging. Great. Fantastic. Daniel's already thinking along those lines. Let's move on.

Make a motion.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Move to approve. second all right motion to approve the budget amendment by commissioner foley all those in favor say aye aye opposed all right up next is the budget amendment for the property purchase of the railroad properties just want a brief description by the town manager exactly what that is for the public to understand

is the two parcels that CSX owns. CSX Railroad. Next to the, I hope, Still Town Hall site. And we have been working for two years to try to acquire it. So it's for that and it's for a narrow strip of railroad that's behind the old terminex building right is it that it's it's behind the homes garden country home and garden on small street okay so we're getting both of those and then we'll work with the owner uh to then transfer that or sell that property there move thank you for that earnest money deposit that's not the purchase price no this is the whole amount so so what happened was that we budgeted it in last fiscal year it did not carry over so we needed to re-budget it

Because they're finally ready to actually second the vote.

Everybody knock on wood though.

Yeah, knock on wood. Move vigorously.

Approve the budget. Approve the budget. Second. Second.

Aye.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. Up next is the interlocal ad vorum tax billing and collection agreements.

so the county's been giving us a pretty good deal for many years and they realized that the deal they were giving us and so this is updating what they charge as a percentage to collect the town's taxes it's still a good deal i think and and heather worked on him for a while and so it's going to stage up over time it's going to stage up it's going to increase incrementally just for the for the next three years up to the rate that they wanted to start charging us initially

so we had a discount by the county unintentionally had a very low rate for less than half a percent yeah and this is this is in line with what other um municipalities are doing for the counties to do this service and they're charging solid city and ghost in the same thing yeah very good I move to

approve the interlocal ad valorem tax billing and collection revision good description all right second second commissioner all those in favor say aye aye opposed all right up next is the request for the mou with chatham county for louis friedman parking So we'd like to do some parking.

We currently have the easements. We just want to add 10 places where we have a little bit of money in the Lewis Freeman Park project for this. I am going to probably put this on hold just for a slight time just to make sure we can get through the Lewis Freeman Park construction without needing this $4,800 is what the quote is.

Rectory Street.

Yeah, so if you pull into where the tax office is, it's going to be that little grass area.

and the county is in favor and they're going to maintain it after we build it thank you uh i move uh hang on a second here are we to i'll make sure you approve the mou with chatham county from chatham county blue spring park uh parking parking expansion all right is there a second second

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? All right. And last before closed session is the request to convey personal property to the Liberty Police Department.

Can you describe that real quickly? Yeah. Personal property.

We got new body cameras and new cameras, and so we just want to give our old stuff to Liberty to help them out.

They'll be erased if there's no data on it, that type of thing, right?

Yeah.

That's a very generous offer. Move to approve the conveyance of personal property to Liberty Police Department.

Second.

Thank you. Commissioner Thurber, all those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Right. Now. I'll take a motion to enter in a closed session pursuant to NCGS 143.318.11.8.3 to consult with the county attorney for instructions concerning the judicial action of 7th Direction Police at Al versus Town of Pittsboro at Al.

I move.

Thank you, Commissioner Hunziker. Second. Second, Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please vote.

Aye.

We're back in open session. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Motion by Commissioner Hunziker, second by Commissioner Thurber. All those in favor, say aye. Thank you.